Chapter 1 #2
But he's not looking at the roses. He's looking at the front door again, his jaw tight, his weight shifting onto the balls of his feet like a man ready to move in any direction at a second's notice.
I can feel the nerves rolling off him in waves. His wife must carry a big stick or loaded weapon with the sweat beading off this guy’s brow. Yikes.
A muffled buzz vibrates from inside his coat pocket and he flinches hard enough that I take a half step back.
"You need to get that?"
"No." He pulls the phone out, kills the power without looking at the screen, and shoves it back into his pocket with shaky hands. "No, sorry ’bout that. The..uhh, reds. Yeah, gimme the reds. A dozen. I don’t know. Whatever a fifty will buy me."
I pull the stems and start wrapping them. "You sure you don't want to add some whites? Go big or go home, right?"
"Yeah. Sure. Fine. Whatever you think." He's not listening anymore. His eyes stay fixed on the front window and his fingers drum against the counter, fast and uneven. He gives off the vibes of a man whose nerves are cooking him from the inside out.
Poor guy. His wife must really be on the warpath.
I wrap the roses in tissue paper and tie them off. "That will be forty-two even."
He shoves a fifty into my hand before I finish the sentence. His fingers are warm and damp against my palm.
"Keep it." He tucks the roses under his arm and scans the shop behind me. "You got a back way outta here?"
I point toward the back door that opens onto the alley. "Through there. Takes you out to the side street and the nearby parking lot."
He's already moving, cutting past the counter and heading for the door without looking back. He drops a folded piece of paper on his way past and it hits the floor near my boot.
"Oh. Hey, wait. You dropped something." I bend down and pick it up.
The back door jingles as he pushes through it, and he's gone before I can get the words out a second time.
“Damn it.” I release a frustrated huff. Some people’s energy reeks and that man leaves a trail of bad juju anyone can follow.
I debate how much I really want to be a good samaritan. I stare at the folded paper in my hand. The fold is tight, deliberate, the crease sharp enough that whoever made it meant for it to stay closed.
That has to make it important and I’d rather he not come back. Thirty seconds and I can give it back to him and be done.
I push through the back door. Cars whizz by both exits of the alley. Chicago’s wintry evening air hits my face hard enough to make my eyes sting. After ten hours in a warm shop full of flower-sweetened air, the alley is a different world.
Damp concrete and the sour funk of the dumpster two doors down mix with the rain that came through earlier.
Underneath all of it there's a metallic edge that pricks at the back of my nose, sharp and unfamiliar.
Tension rolls through my muscles, tightening one by one.
It starts at the base of my skull and works down my back and all the way to my calves.
I try to move but I can’t. The overhead light flickers in that stuttering yellow glow I've been begging my landlord to fix since March. It throws the alley into washed out shadows that seem to move.
I open my mouth to call out to him, but the sound comes first.
A crack. Sharp. Ear-shattering.
It punches through the alley, stealing my breath. It bounces off the narrow corridor of space between my building and the next.
The movies lie about gunshots. They make them big, booming and theatrical. This one is tight, contained and already gone by the time my brain catches up to what my ears just heard.
My eyes find the source and every blood cell in my body turns into ice cubes.
Two men the size of tanks stand at the head of the alley. I squint into the quickly fading light, unable to make out their faces from thirty feet away. The one on the left grips my customer by his coat collar, hauling his limp silhouette sideways. The other holds a gun with his arm still extended.
Tank Number One releases his hold and the guy with the roses folds. Knees first, then shoulders, then the side of his head hits the wet concrete with a dull, heavy thud.
I suck in harsh breath. Goosebumps swarm my entire body.
Roses scatter across the ground around him, red and white petals on gray stone.
Why my brain hooks on that detail right now, I don’t know.
The burst of color on the dull cement is safer to think about than how close I am to getting whacked behind my flower shop of all locations, I guess.
For a second all I can do is stare.
And then another shot rings out. My eyes snap to the burst of light from the muzzle and my whole body jolts as if released from paralysis.
“What the fuck is happening?” I skitter backward, my feet shuffling on the cement, trying to reach for the side door I just stepped out of.
“Please don’t see me. Please don’t see me,” I whisper weakly into the shadowed alley, pressing my back to the wall. If there ever was a time to fade into the background, now would be a really good time for that to happen.
Tank Number Two grumbles something probably along the lines of how dare the flower dude make him kill the dead guy. But I can’t really make out what he says to the body on the ground before kicking him for good measure.
My stomach heaves. Blood pools from beneath his head, dark and slow, mixing with the rainwater and creeping across the concrete in a black halo.
I can't move, which would be a really useful skill to have right about now.
Every muscle in my body locks up and my lungs stop cooperating.
The paper crumples tighter in my fist, my palm slick with sweat, the folded edges cutting into my skin.
My heart hammers so hard against my ribs I can feel the heavy thud reverberate through my entire body.
I try to swallow it back, but the bile rising from my stomach comes up anyway.
Then I see the third man.
Ice slides down my spine, vertebra by vertebra, so cold and precise it could be a finger tracing the bones. My stomach drops through the concrete and keeps falling. The air leaves my lungs in a rush that takes every coherent thought with it.
A third man steps out of the shadows behind the tanks.
He walks toward the body on the ground with his hands in the pockets of a coat I recognize, casual and unhurried, like he's crossing a parking lot on the way to his car.
He pulls a gun from inside the coat, points it at the back of the dead man's head.
Then pulls the trigger.
The crack bounces off the brick walls and I flinch so hard my teeth snap together.
He tucks the gun away and straightens up. A smirk pulls at the corner of his mouth, slow and satisfied, like he just won a hand of poker instead of putting a bullet in a man's skull.
“Fucking rat. Throw him in the dumpster where the trash belongs.”
His voice carries down the alley, calm and clear.
His Russian accent thickens around the consonants.
My stomach turns inside out because I know that voice.
I used to think it was sexy. I've heard it whisper against my hair.
I've heard it apologize to my sister with a charm that made Raine roll her eyes and smile despite herself.
My heart is permanently lodged in my throat. I know that voice. I also heard it promise me a life of safety and love.
Nikolai.
My blood goes cold so fast that my vision sharpens instead of blurring. Every detail in the alley burns into my retinas with a clarity I will never forget.
His face is pulled into a mask of indifference, like taking a life is business as usual for him. The really shitty truth is, after learning he isn’t simply a powerful businessman, but also Bratva, death is probably his normal MO.
Another wave of disgust hits the back of my throat and burns.
Three months of dinners, late night make out sessions, and midnight phone calls and I never saw this side of him.
It was a hard way to learn just how many masks a person can wear. I was so stupid to let a handsome face nearly sweep me off my feet.
And then I witnessed the mask slip. A waitress dropped a glass of wine on his lap one evening and the monster he kept chained burst out.
He grabbed her by the throat and then slapped her so hard she fell to the ground.
Nikolai’s father was there. I saw him help her up and tell her something, but I didn’t wait around until it was my turn.
If Nikolai had no problem hurting some as innocent as a waitress, how long before that beast found me, too?
I left. That was three months ago and I prayed I would never see the man again, but apparently I didn’t pray hard enough.
There’s only a dumpster halfway down the short alley hiding my presence. All he would have to do is look up and he would see me.
No, no. This can’t be happening.
I can’t open the door to my shop and I sure as hell can’t make a run for it before they spot me.
The yellow light over my head has decided not to work, but how long before it revives itself?
I run the pads of my fingers along the brick wall. If I can only move out from under the light…
Nikolai looks up just as yellow bathes me from head to toe.
“For fuck’s sake.”
Dark, empty eyes find mine.
Adrenaline jacks through every vessel in my body. Recognition is instantaneous. And in the half second before I move, I watch him decide what that means.
“Bring her to me.”
Shit.
His words chase me down the opposite end of the alley and I put major knees to chest and force all my effort into moving my legs as fast as they can go.
If I only loved cardio more, I would be better at this. I get to the end of the alley, and turn a hard right.
Footfalls coming up fast and hard behind me send my heart into a panicked rhythm. Pain blooms across my chest.
Which basically feels like a heart attack, I realize. Only if I stop moving to clutch at my chest, I’m dead.