Chapter 40
vera
It had been snowing that night. I remembered the sound better than anything else—how the city got muffled.
I remembered how the air tasted like fresh snow and gunmetal, and I remembered how the metal grate fence was so cold it felt like knives on my hands.
The tops of the fence, exposed metal points, gleamed in the city lights around.
The wind was brutal there on the rooftop.
My father didn’t know where I’d gone. I was supposed to kill a man in the docks and intercept a package delivery he was set to receive.
I was sixteen years old, and by then I had a solid grasp on marksmanship.
My father had drilled me until I could shoot a bat out of the air in the darkest hours of the night, and he’d had me pin up some of my hunting trophies—not taxidermized, just strung up on trees for me to see and be reminded of until the wild beasts ate them.
Reminded that I was a killer.
My hand didn’t hesitate on the trigger anymore. Or it wasn’t supposed to.
But I hesitated with the man. Anton Graves.
I knew his name like I knew my own, even though I’d never spoken to him, never interacted with him, and he didn’t know I existed, didn’t know I knew he existed.
He had a small house over by the docks, right on the edge of where residential gave way to industrial, and it smelled like copper and smoke, like every breath in was a mouthful of old pennies.
I made it to the house, got through the security systems like they weren’t even there, and I came up behind him in the living room, gun in hand, aimed at the back of his head from across the room.
And I hesitated. Not because of him, but because of his daughter, a little willowy girl who had his red hair and impossibly light skin, like the light could shine right through her. She must have been… seven, eight.
I’d dealt with situations like that before. The girl was supposed to be out with her mother. Apparently the plan had changed. I would set up a distraction, send her away, deal with him. I was used to that. The plan always changed. I was a professional.
But he was teaching her piano.
They had an old Lester upright, not very good quality, a little out of tune.
Probably a great-grandparent’s inheritance.
And the girl was playing, little hands performing a Tchaikovsky’s children’s piece, and Anton was nodding along.
I gripped the gun so tightly I thought it might have broken, my breath coming ragged, watching the performance, terrified for her, for a girl I didn’t know.
And when she played a wrong note, I felt the panic like I was the one who’d done it.
But Anton didn’t stop her, didn’t hit her, didn’t shake her and tell her it’s like you’re trying to disappoint me, didn’t make her start from the beginning.
Instead, she looked up at him, the music slowing, and he nodded, showing her the right chord.
She took a second to arrange her hand and press the right notes, and she kept going, her shoulders a little higher, and Anton kept nodding along like he was just enjoying the music.
I didn’t kill him.
It was like I was trying to disappoint my father.
Instead, I staggered out of the house, tears hot on my face the whole way, and I left the gun in a safe drop point.
I took the car to the Century Building, a piece of old Baroque-style architecture in the north side of town, and I snuck in and up to the roof.
And once I was there in the cold, biting wind, I stared out over the drop below as I gripped the fence so tightly I thought it might have sliced through my fingers.
It would have been so easy. Even with the ragged metal edges on the top, I could have jumped the fence, taken one step out into the abyss, and this would all be done.
I didn’t want to live. I didn’t want to go back and see my father again. I didn’t want to hear the roar of anger and feel the sting of his belt, not now that I knew what it could have looked like. Not when I would have been thinking of that little girl who knew her father was proud of her.
So I climbed the fence.
The fence was still there, the same as it had been. A little more rusted. Old and tired like we all were.
Elaine looked curiously at me as I gripped the fence in my hand, like I had back then, leaning against it.
I didn’t know why I was doing this. Was I really planning on telling her about my life? About my past?
I flashed back to that moment an hour ago, when I’d been raging in her face, a cold, unfeeling creature, and her eyes… how she looked at me like she cared.
Unbelievable. I was falling for Elaine Whitner.
Up until recently, I would never have even believed I could have feelings for somebody. This inconvenient thing was rapidly becoming all-consuming.
To think I was troubled by how much I was falling for my wife.
“Are you okay, Vera?” Elaine said, touching my elbow.
“I’m all right.” The way it came out didn’t sound all right. I gritted my teeth. “I haven’t been okay for a long time. No point in worrying now.”
“It is different now,” she whispered. “I’m here now. And I care.”
I rested my forehead against the fence. The sharp edges on the top, glistening in the moonlight, still sent a gut-wrenching uneasiness through me. The scale of the drop past it… the wind in my face this high up.
It didn’t suit me to be afraid. But I was.
No matter how hard he tried—no matter how hard they all tried—I was human.
I was a person.
And people felt fear.
“When I was sixteen years old, I was sent to kill a man who lived and worked in the docks district. Anton Graves. He hadn’t done anything, he was just inconvenient.
Another group was using him as a mule without him knowing.
I had to kill him and receive the delivery myself. But I couldn’t kill him.”
“How come?”
I didn’t know how to say it. I closed my eyes. “His daughter was there. She was on the piano. Playing Tchaikovsky’s Lark Song. He was… teaching her.”
I didn’t need to explain it any further. Elaine’s expression softened, and she stepped closer to me, her hand on my back. Not afraid of me. She should have been. Why wasn’t she?
“I came here. I was terrified of heights. I’ve numbed myself to it a lot now, but back then, I couldn’t step out onto a ledge.
But I just thought… if I was going to die, I should do it that way.
Falling to my death, the way I’d been supposed to.
Everything terrible in my life had happened because I didn’t fall.
Like the world was… punishing me because I hadn’t fallen.
” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I had to clear that debt. But I couldn’t. ”
“Vera…”
“Not because I couldn’t make myself do it. I was halfway there. Already on top of the fence, ready to finally fall like I was supposed to. And then… he showed up.”
“Your father?” she whispered. I nodded.
“He’d gotten word that Anton had received the package.
Alive. He tracked my steps and found me before I could do it.
” I gripped the fence tighter. “Kalman Farkas was a terrible, wrathful man who spoke only in cruelties. The cycles of his anger dominated every aspect of my daily life. Every time he had his explosive rage, I feared it would be the last time, that he’d finally kill me.
Anger was his mother tongue, and the only language I’d ever heard him speak.
But this… this was the worst I’d ever seen from him. ”
She put her hand on my back, caressing softly. I gripped the fence tighter, feeling the metal digging into my fingers like it had back then.
“The exposed metal points at the top of the fence,” I said. “He grabbed me by the back of the head… and he drove my face down into them. And he dragged. I remember the pain like it just happened. I remember the way my skin tore, how I felt it bunch like fabric.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, three words with an ocean of grief underneath.
“He wanted me to have a reminder. Something that would follow me for life, and I could see it every time I looked in the mirror… so I would know what happened if I disobeyed.” Slowly, I released my grip on the fence, angry red lines left on my hand.
“Six months later, I disobeyed him again. I pointed the gun at his head, and I fired. Just like that, the man who had tyrannized me all my formative years… one pull of a trigger, and he was gone. I remember it felt so small, so pathetic in the end, but I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t stop. I shot him in the head, and he was dead before he hit the floor, but I shot him again.
One bullet split his jaw. One ruptured his throat.
Two went into his chest, and one went into his stomach.
I remember screaming as I kept going after the chamber was empty, kneeling over his dead body, the gun clicking…
clicking… as I kept trying to fire. Nothing left.
So I hit him instead. I hit him once for every time he’d hit me.
My belt was the handle of a gun, slammed down into his fractured skull, over, and over, and over.
I kept screaming at him. I don’t remember what I said.
Just that I couldn’t stop. I was more afraid than I’d ever been in my life.
Like somehow he would get up and attack me again, like my brain couldn’t accept that he was dead, that he was gone, that he wasn’t going to do that to me anymore.
I killed my father. I cleared part of the debt, the three of us who were supposed to die.
But there was still one left. There was still me.
The scar was still there. And every time I’m on a high ledge…
I’m not afraid I’ll fall. I’m afraid because it reminds me I still have that debt to pay.
This nightmare can only end when I finally fall, too. ”
Elaine pulled me out of the spiral and into an embrace, wrapping her arms tight around me. I clenched my jaw, something inside me shattering like thin glass no matter how hard I tried to hold it in one piece.
“You don’t have to fall, Vera,” she whispered. “You aren’t a debt. You’re a human being. You’re a person. You’re just a little girl who had everything taken away from her and has been scared ever since.”
Nobody had ever gotten close to me like this before. My guard was down, and Elaine had every advantage on me, her arms wrapped around me, hands close to my vitals.
But she didn’t want to kill me. She didn’t want to extort me, didn’t want to blackmail me.
She didn’t want to hurt me.
She didn’t want to remind me what happened if I disobeyed.
She wasn’t disappointed.
So that was how the Wolf fell. Not to bullet or blade, but to a few whispered words and a soft embrace.
“I’m not supposed to be alive,” I whispered.
“None of us are supposed to be here. It’s a miracle for each of us to be born. It’s a miracle for us to find each other. But we are. And we do.” She buried her face in my shoulder. “And I’m so grateful that you are alive. That you did find your way to me.”
I gripped fistfuls of the back of her dress, and I pressed my face against the side of her head, holding her close to me as I cried.
I’d never been supposed to cry. He would never have let me.
But Elaine would.