Chapter 12 Bastian
BASTIAN
dying in the window /?dīiNG in T?H? ?windō/: phrase
So that’s the question. Will you help me?
Fuck, I’ve never sounded so pathetic in my whole fucking life. But what am I these days if not a pathetic man? Everything I’ve ever worked for has been ripped away from me, one bit at a time, and all that’s left is a raw, bleeding mess where Bastian Hale used to be.
And now, that raw, bleeding mess has found itself standing in front of one of its greatest mistakes and asking—no, begging—no, groveling—for her help.
She doesn’t answer. Not right away. There’s a silence between us that carries a different quality than any of the silences that we’ve ever shared before. This silence has fangs.
And in that silence, I look at her.
Eliana stands with her back against the door, one hand still gripping the frame like it’s the only thing keeping her upright.
The charcoal button-down she wore to my funeral hangs open.
The thin white undershirt beneath it is damp with sweat and hangs too loosely on her frame.
I see the hint of her rib cage, like a starved alley cat.
Her hair, longer than I remember and much wilder, falls around her face in dark waves that she hasn’t bothered to tame.
But it’s her eyes that destroy me.
They’re open, staring somewhere past my left shoulder, unfocused. The rich hazel hue I used to get lost in has gone cloudy at the edges, milky in a way that confirms what I already knew from watching her navigate the apartment as I stood in the darkness and waited for her: She can’t see me anymore.
The ninety days have passed. The blindness won, just like the doctors said it would.
She looks so thin. Exhausted. There are shadows under those unseeing eyes that speak to sleepless nights and stress I can’t begin to fathom.
And she’s never looked more beautiful.
Or more breakable.
Christ. What the hell have I done to her?
She still hasn’t spoken. The more time that passes without a reply, the more I hate myself for ever even asking the question. What was I thinking? How dare you, she asked over and over, and she’s right—how dare I? Haven’t I taken enough from this woman? When is it too much?
It became too much a long fucking time ago, sneers a vicious voice in my head. You knew that then, and it didn’t stop you from doing what you always do: taking more, more, more.
Finally, Eliana releases an exhale that signals the end of this godawful purgatory of silence. I watch her throat bob as she swallows. With trembling fingers, she combs flyaways out of her face.
I don’t bother hoping. I gave that shit up the day I embraced my brother at the foot of Project Olympus. But I do wonder if maybe there is a way out of the darkness. A way into the light. If she’ll give me her hand and show me it can be done.
But as soon as the first syllable leaves her lips, that not-a-hope gets snuffed the fuck out.
“No.”
She might as well have stabbed me in the gut.
“No?” I breathe back stupidly.
“You heard me,” she says. “It’s a word you’re awfully familiar with, isn’t it? No. N-O. I’m not standing here and letting you manipulate me again, Bastian. I’m sick of your lies. More importantly, I’m done with them.”
“This isn’t manipulation. Sage is—”
“Stop.” She holds up a hand that freezes me dead in my tracks. “You think you can just show up here, after everything, and I’ll fall in line because you need something? Because you’ve decided now is when you need my help?”
I open my mouth to argue, but she’s not finished.
“You made your choices, Bastian. Every single one of them. You chose to work for your brother. You chose to kill that man. You chose to fake your death and let me mourn you.” Her unseeing eyes are all the more haunting, because she still sees everything that matters.
“And now, you’re choosing to drag me back into your mess because it’s convenient for you.
So, no. No, no, no. The answer is no a million times over. ”
“If you’ll just let me explain—” I try again. “Aleksei left me no choice. Sage’s life—”
“I don’t care.”
“—hangs in the balance, and you’re the only person who could possibly understand—”
“Get out.”
“Please,” I hear myself whimpering, “just hear me out—”
“You have sixty seconds to leave,” she says. “Starting now.”
“Eliana—”
“Fifty-five seconds. And just so you know, when I hit zero, I’m going to start screaming loud enough to wake this entire building. Then I’m calling the police and telling them exactly where the supposedly dead Bastian Hale is hiding.”
“For fuck’s sake, you wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t I?” She cocks her head to one side. “I don’t care if it puts you in danger or ruins whatever plan you’re cooking up. All I care about is getting you out of my apartment and out of my life before you destroy what little I have left.”
“Just give me—”
“Forty-five seconds, Bastian.”
I know when I’ve lost. Without another word, I turn and leave. She slams the door behind me hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling tiles. It floats around me and coats my shoulders like the sprinkle of powdered sugar on a kouign-amann from a lifetime ago.
The hallway yawns before me, dimly lit and smelling of mildew and someone’s forgotten takeout. I trudge down the stairwell. My feet are heavy, so fucking heavy. Just putting one in front of the other is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I should have known better. In hindsight, it’s so fucking obvious that she’d tell me to go to hell. What did I expect—that she’d welcome me with open arms after everything I’ve done? After what she saw in that alley?
The image of her standing in the doorway in her funeral clothes burns behind my eyelids. Her ribs poking through a sweat-stained undershirt. I did that to her. I broke her down to this shadow of the woman. She used to march into my office ready for war, and I ruined her.
Outside, the midsummer humidity hits me like a wet wall. The world doesn’t give a shit that I’m supposed to be dead. Traffic still moves. People still walk past without looking up from their phones.
I continue my trudge to the car, a nondescript sedan I bought with cash three days ago. I paid extra for the salesman to “forget” about the paperwork. I wanted nothing that could be traced back to the dead man I’m pretending to be.
I get in and drive exactly one block before pulling over. From here, I have a clear view of her building’s entrance.
I tell myself I’m just making sure she’s safe. Once I know that no one followed her home from the funeral, I’ll leave. Purely pragmatic, nothing more.
It’s all bullshit, and I know it. The truth is I can’t make myself drive away.
I lean my head back against the headrest and close my eyes, but all I see is the hatred with which she looked at me in that apartment.
You have a lot of fucking nerve.
She’s right. I do. Only a man with a lot of fucking nerve would do what I did.
Three nights ago, I killed a man and dragged his corpse into a South Side warehouse that Aleksei owns through a series of nameless shell companies.
The resemblance between us had been close enough.
Same height, similar build. After I put two bullets in his skull at close range, the facial features became academic anyway.
The coroner I paid off did the rest. A few grand in the right pockets, and suddenly, Greek mobster Giannis Kostis became Bastian Hale in the official reports. The medical examiner didn’t even blink when he signed off on the death certificate. Just another day in Chicago.
I’d stood in the shadows outside that warehouse, watching the coroner’s van pull away with “my” body, knowing that by morning, the news would report the tragic death of a successful restaurateur. A cautionary tale about getting too close to the wrong people.
What ever happened to him? some people would say. He had such a bright future ahead of him.
But the only people who’d say that would be the ones who never really knew me.
I was all too aware, as I meticulously burned off the Greek mafioso’s fingertips and ripped out his teeth with pliers to avoid dental record identification, that my future wasn’t bright at all. It was pitch-fucking black.
And so was Sage’s.
Unless I found a way out for both of us.
I tell myself I’ll leave in five minutes.
Then ten. Then thirty. But an hour passes, and I’m still sitting here like a fucking stalker, watching the warm square of light that marks Eliana’s apartment.
The evening darkens around me. Streetlights turn on one by one, but that golden rectangle remains constant.
I wonder what she’s doing. If she’s raging. If she’s crying.
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
Her fists against my chest hurt like hell. But at least when she was hitting me, she was touching me. So long as that was true, I could feel something other than the pervasive numbness that’s consumed me since that night in the alley.
When a car pulls up to the building, I sit up straighter. As I watch, Yasmin climbs out, grocery bags in hand, wearing a white button-down shirt with a grease stain blooming across the front. She looks as exhausted as Eliana did. They both look like they’ve been running on fumes for weeks.
She’s tottering with the bags in her grasp, though they can’t be that heavy because they’re barely full. Even from here, I can make out the curved edge of a milk jug through the plastic, a loaf of bread crushed against what might be eggs. A sack of potatoes, maybe. Basic shit. Survival groceries.
Then the building door swings shut behind Yasmin, and I’m left staring at nothing again.
Until she reappears in the lit window.
Through the curtains, I watch a second silhouette merge.
They must be talking, her and Eliana. Eliana’s smaller frame sways, then wobbles toward Yasmin like she’s been gut-shot.
Even from here, through window glass and summer humidity and the gauzy curtains, I see it happen.
Her knees buckle. Her whole body just gives up.
Yasmin catches her before she hits the ground. They sink together, two shapes becoming one dark mass against the amber light.
My hand moves to the door handle without conscious thought. Every instinct screams at me to go to her and fix the problem. But how can I, when I’m the goddamn problem?
I force my fingers to release the metal. She made herself crystal fucking clear. My presence would only make things worse.
Still, I can’t look away. Yasmin rocks Eliana back and forth. Like comforting a child.
I did this. I’m the root cause. The poison in her veins. And for the first time since the night it all went to shit, I feel something other than numbness.
I feel shame.