Chapter 4
MILO
"She's a liability, Milo. Loose ends require cutting."
Viktor leaned back against the stainless steel prep table, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips despite the 'No Smoking' sign directly above his head.
Ash flaked onto the floor as he talked. The kitchen of The Silver Table was closed, the cooks gone, the air thick with the smell of stale garlic and industrial degreaser.
I kept my hands in my pockets, leaning against the doorframe. Relaxed. Easy. Just a guy having a chat. "She didn't see a thing, Viktor. Literally."
He didn't laugh at my joke. Instead, his eyes—those hard little beads of flint—bored into me. "She heard. The blind hear everything."
I shook my head slightly. "She didn't hear anything.
She didn't even know I was there." I waited a beat, letting the lie settle.
"She's not a player, Vik. She's background noise.
You clip a blind piano player, and you bring the wrath of god down on this place.
ADA lawsuits, news vans, sympathy pieces.
You don't want that kind of heat for a clean kill. "
Viktor took a drag, narrowing his eyes at the nickname. Or maybe it was the rest of what I'd said. He hated when I used logic. It interfered with his instinct to bludgeon problems until they stopped moving.
"Verify that," he grunted finally, pointing his finger at me. More ash fell to the freshly mopped floor with every statement. "You watch her. You stay close. If she talks to the cops, if she even looks like she is remembering something... you call me. Then I handle it."
"Consider it done." I pushed off the doorframe, flashing him my best surfer-boy grin. The one that never reached my eyes. "I'll be her shadow."
"Good. Now get out. You stink like bleach."
I walked out the side door and into the ally, stepping over the spot where I’d scrubbed a man’s life off the pavement less than twenty-four hours ago.
The bleach he spoke of had done its job.
The concrete was pristine, lighter than the surrounding asphalt.
A blank slate. Soon enough the weather, rodents and grease from the restaurant would make it unnoticeable from any other part of the alley.
That was what I was supposed to be. A blank slate. A nobody. A void where problems disappeared.
But as I slid behind the wheel of my nondescript sedan, the engine turning over with a low, predatory purr, I knew I wasn't doing this to appease Viktor.
Usually, once the bleach dried and the bags were burned, the job was done. The faces faded into the gray static of my memory. They were just messes I’d tidied up. Debris.
Not this time.
Not her.
I checked the rearview mirror. My own eyes stared back, moss-green and flat. I told myself it was risk management. Loose ends strangled you if you didn't cut them. If she remembered something—a sound, a smell, anything—then Viktor was right. She was a liability.
But that was a fucking lie.
I shifted into gear, the vibration humming up my arm. I didn't care about the risk. I didn't care about Viktor's paranoia.
I just wanted to fucking see her again.
Day one was clinical. Professional.
That's what I told myself as I tailored my schedule around the number forty-two bus route.
I sat in my car, three lengths back from the bus stop, watching Raven Oakley navigate the rush hour crowd.
Raven.
I was slightly surprised when Viktor told me. An unusual name for an unusual girl.
It was drizzly out today, and she wore a beige trench coat belted tight at the waist with black, rubber-soled shoes, her white cane sweeping in rhythmic arcs before her. Tap. Tap. Step. Step.
She didn't move like a victim. That was the first thing that annoyed me.
Victims scurried. They hunched. They projected fear. Raven moved with an unsettling precision. She counted steps. I saw her lips moving slightly as she walked—one, two, three, turn. She mapped the world in a grid within her mind.
As I watched, a drunk stumbled out onto the sidewalk, eyes tracking her cane, then the bag slung across her body.
I was out of my car before I made the conscious decision to move…
By the time Raven's bus arrived, the drunk was nursing a broken wrist in the alley behind the convenience store. But he'd live. Probably.
And she boarded the bus, oblivious to what had almost happened to her.
I followed the bus, keeping a steady distance.
When she got off, she walked two blocks to an apartment building that had seen better days. Pulling over, I watched her pause at the curb, head tilted. Curious, I looked around, and spotted a Tesla approaching that I hadn't even noticed.
She waited. The car passed. Then she crossed.
I parked down the street, engine off, windows cracked.
The scent of rain and city exhaust filled the cab.
It was time to leave. I had my answer about the girl.
As predicted, her routine was boring. There were no cops.
No suspicious phone calls. Just a blind woman living her life with more competence than half the seeing people I knew.
But still, I stayed, waiting to see a light come on that would let me know which apartment was hers.
No lights came on. But in the reflection from the streetlight I saw her silhouette move across an uncovered window on the second floor. I guess there was no sense turning on lights when your world was nothing but darkness.
I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel. This wasn't my normal kind of gig. I was a ghost. In, out, gone before the dust settled. I didn't do lingering. Lingering was for amateurs and people looking to get caught.
"Go home, Milo," I muttered. "Job's done."
But I didn't reach for the ignition. I couldn't.
My gaze drifted back to that second-floor window.
There was no flicker of a TV, no warm glow of a lamp.
Just absolute darkness. Most people couldn't handle that kind of void.
They needed light to make them feel safe from the monsters in the dark.
Raven? She lived in it, moving through a world that would terrify anyone else with a haunting kind of grace.
I shifted, the leather creaking under my weight.
Why the hell was I still sitting here?
It wasn't just that she was blind. It was the way she'd gone so completely still in the alley that night. That was the stillness of a predator, not prey.
I’d seen made men with less composure than this girl in a velvet dress.
I shoved the thought away, rubbing a hand over the scruff on my jaw.
Professional curiosity, I told myself. That's all this is.
But I knew a lie when I told one.
I watched the dark window, waiting to see her again and knowing I probably wouldn't.
And yet, I stayed.
Day three, I followed her inside.
I hadn't slept more than two hours at a stretch since the night I first saw her.
The Silver Table was packed with the Friday night crowd.
High rollers, politicians with their mistresses, and mobsters pretending to be businessmen.
I wore a charcoal suit and blended into the shadows near the service alcove—my favorite spot.
Close enough to the kitchen to intercept Viktor if he got antsy, close enough to the back door if I needed to make a quick escape, and close enough to the floor to watch the show.
Raven sat at the grand piano on the raised dais. Tonight, she wore black velvet. Simple and elegant. The dress hugged her figure, outlining the curve of her waist, the slope of her shoulders, but left her collarbone and throat bare and exposed.
Something tightened behind my sternum.
A waiter bumped my arm. "Excuse me, sir."
I didn't blink, didn't look at him.
On stage, Raven finished a set. Applause rippled through the room. Polite and dismissive. She didn't acknowledge it as her hands rested on her lap, fingers twitching slightly.
Movement to her left caught my eye as the floor manager approached. Geoffrey was a greasy little weasel who thought wearing a tuxedo made him royalty.
Geoffrey. I huffed out a disdainful breath through my nose. Even his name sounded like a sneeze.
Shifting, I pressed my shoulder into the wall and watched him as he leaned over the piano, laying a hand on Raven's shoulder.
My vision narrowed. The periphery of the room went black.
"Don't do that," I sing-song whispered. But I couldn't do anything without giving away my presence to the woman I was stalking.
Geoffrey squeezed her shoulder and I saw Raven's posture stiffen as she braced herself. She turned her face toward him, a polite smile plastered on her lips, but her neck was rigid.
I couldn't hear them over the din of the restaurant, but I could read the body language. Geoffrey was explaining something simple, gesturing with his free hand, while the other lingered too long on her velvet-clad shoulder. A condescending smirk on his little rat face.
Finally, she pulled away with a subtle shift of her weight.
He laughed and patted her arm. Patted her. Like a goddamn dog.
I felt a sharp, hot pressure in my chest. An unfamiliar rage that had nothing to do with the job. This wasn't professional detachment. This was the urge to walk across the dining room, grab Geoffrey by the back of his cheap bowtie, and introduce his face to the Steinway's ivory keys.
Calm down. You're not even supposed to be here. To her, you're a ghost. Ghosts don't break noses in public.
Geoffrey finally walked away and left Raven sitting alone on the bench.
She reached up and brushed the spot on her shoulder where he’d touched her. As if wiping away dirt.
Then, her head tilted.
She did it again. That same, sharp, bird-like movement. Cocking her head to the side, exposing the column of her throat, and I realized she was listening. Filtering the room.
I closed my eyes, wanting to experience the world the way she did. I heard waiters dropping cutlery. Ice hitting glass. The murmur of a deal going down at table four.
When I opened my eyes again, she was still just sitting there. But she wasn't preparing to play another song.
She was cataloging everything going on around her.
One side of my mouth began to curve as I realized then what I'd suspected all along. She wasn't harmless at all. She was a sponge.
The smile fell as quickly as it'd appeared. If she put the pieces together of what went on in this place, or worse, what had happened that night in the alley, then Viktor was right, she would be dangerous.
I should tell him. That was the smart play. The professional play. Viktor would handle it, and I'd go back to my usual job.
My jaw clenched until it ached.
I stared at her profile, the soft lighting catching the stray hairs that had escaped her updo and were now teasing the edges of her face.
No.
The word surfaced from somewhere deep within me, somewhere I didn't recognize.
I would tell Viktor nothing.
And if that made me a liability too? So be it.
Although if Viktor found out I was compromised, he wouldn't hesitate. He'd put a bullet in her. Then one in me.
I'd deserve it, and maybe she would too. But that didn't mean I was going to let it happen.
Those elegant fingers drifted across the keys, and the melody that followed poured into the hollow spaces of my chest. Melancholy. Haunting. The notes vibrated against the emptiness, making my lungs tight and my blood heavy. It made me…feel.
Sorry, Vik. We're going off-script.