Page 31 of The Mafia King's Baby

“On three. One, two...”

We lift together, and Lang’s body is heavier than I expected. Dead weight, literally. This is practical physics I never wanted to understand firsthand. His arm flops awkwardly as we maneuver him, and I nearly drop my end when his hand brushes against my leg. “I can’t do this. I can’t?—”

“You can.” Yefrem’s voice cuts through my panic, steady and sure. “You are doing it. Just a few more steps.”

We manage to get the body positioned on my burgundy rug—the one I’d found on clearance at HomeGoods and spent an entire afternoon debating because it was slightly more than I wanted to spend but the colors were perfect for the room. Now those burgundy and gold threads are about to hide bloodstains and wrap a corpse.

The irony isn’t lost on me. I’ve spent two years making this house perfect, and the last month turning it into the kind of place where people would want to stay, feel safe, and be welcome, only for it to become the scene of a murder.

Yefrem calmly begins working the edges of the rug around Lang’s body. The casual competence of it chills me more than anything else that’s happened tonight.

This isn’t his first time disposing of a body.

Of course, it isn’t. He’s a Russian Mafia boss, and I’m the idiot who let him into my home because he had nice eyes and an accent that made me think of old movies.

“Do you have tape? Something strong?”

I nod toward the kitchen, not trusting my voice. The blood on the floor catches the overhead light, and I have to look away. “There’s duct tape in the drawer by the sink. The one that sticks.”

“Get it. All of it.”

My legs feel unsteady as I navigate around the blood spatter, careful not to step in any of it. My bare feet are cold against the tile. When did I lose my slippers? The surrealness of that thought, wondering about slippers while stepping around a bloody crime scene, threatens to break something in my brain.

The kitchen drawer sticks when I pull it open as it always does, warped from the humidity when the dishwasher leaked last winter. It’s another item on my endless list of things to fix, right after “dispose of federal agent’s body” and “figure out how to live with being a criminal.”

I grab the roll of heavy-duty tape I bought for the guest room renovations, along with a smaller roll I keep for packages. Two rolls feels inadequate for wrapping a human being, but it’s what I have.

When I return to the living room, Yefrem has wrapped the rug around Lang’s body like a cocoon, holding the edges in place with one hand while extending the other toward me. The bundle looks smaller than I expected and more manageable. Just a rug-shaped package that happens to contain what used to be a person.

“Start at his feet and work your way up. Multiple layers. We need to make sure nothing leaks through.”

The tape makes a sharp ripping sound as I pull it from the roll, unnaturally loud in the silence of my house. I’ve always hated that sound. It reminds me of moving day, of packing up my life and leaving behind everything I liked about the current place. We moved a lot when I was a kid, due to Dad’s career, and I hated starting over. Now, it’s the soundtrack to sealing up a dead body.

My hands shake as I press the first piece of tape against the rug. The sticky side catches on itself, and I have to start over since my fingers are clumsy with adrenaline and shock. The second attempt works better, but barely. “I can’t get it straight.”

“It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just secure.”

I need it to be perfect. Some part of my brain insists that if I can just do this one thing right, if I can wrap this tape neatly and cleanly, then maybe this whole nightmare will somehow make sense. Maybe I can maintain some illusion that I’m still a competent person who has control over her life, instead of someone who’s helping hide a murder because she doesn’t know what else to do.

I continue wrapping, adding layer after layer. The tape gun would make this easier, but it’s in the garage with the rest of my moving supplies, and I don’t want to leave Yefrem alone with the body. Not because I don’t trust him—though I shouldn’t trust him, should I?—but because being alone with what we’ve done feels impossible.

“More around the head.” Yefrem adjusts his grip on the bundle. “That’s where most of the blood is.”

I add extra layers where he indicates, trying not to think about what I’m sealing inside. The burgundy pattern of the rug is barely visible now under all the tape, transformed into something industrial and ominous. My beautiful rug, the one that tied the whole room together, is now a makeshift body bag.

“How do you know how to do this?” The question slips out before I can stop it.

Yefrem pauses in his adjustments, meeting my gaze across the wrapped body. “Experience.”

“How much experience?”

“Enough.”

The non-answer chills me. Enough means more than once. Enough means this is routine for him, just another Friday nightcleaning up after violence. I’m having the worst night of my life, and for him, it’s probably not even in the top ten. “Have you killed other federal agents?”

“No.”

“Other people?”

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