Page 95 of Vasily the Hammer

The screams from some of the women below and the shuffling of feet don’t make me feel any better, but once I peek up, I’m relieved to see that he’s walking behind Alex and Kseniya, who are both gagged and bound but on their feet. The worst I see from them is the fact that they were gagged with the same rope they were bound with and it’s chafed at their mouths, leaving red welts across their cheeks, but those will heal.

The bullet holes I imagine putting in Tony won’t.

The crowd goes into action, but almost everyone is a criminal or surrounded by crime. Nothing gets too wild. The women who panic are ushered outside, the people who know they’re not connected to this and don’t want to be around for whatever shakes out follow behind, the Catholic priest slips away.

Father Niko is one of the first people to actually rush forward, stopping Miguel from rushing to Kseniya, as well. He’ll see his wifesoon, but he’s holding Maribel. The baby needs to be kept out of harm’s way.

Several undercover agents are suddenly really interested in their collars, which are certainly hiding mics.

Switchblades magically appear from several men’s pockets to cut through Kseniya and Alex’s binds. It’s hard to tell if Tony attempted to untie them or not, but everyone seems to believe he did and have no choice but to hack through the knots.

Since Tony was surely the one who tied them himself, I’m doubtful about him trying.

And still up in the front, three rows back, Dima is steaming mad as the ruse unfolds before him, but he plays dumb. “Oh my gosh, what happened to you two?”

Oh my gosh?I mouth to Ana, who snickers but probably taught him that.

“I found them in your car!” Tony shouts.

“Yeah, I’ve been waiting for the right time to bring them in,” Dima says innocently. “But they weren’t bound—"

Father Niko looks like he’s about to faint. “It was you? You had them?”

Dima tilts his head in confusion. “Yeah? I was told—”

Miguel, also in on the bit— and apparently aiming for the Flagstaff Friends and Family of the Bratva Oscar award— shouts over him, “You kidnapped my wife?”

“What?” I’m legitimately stunned as Dima lifts his hand to his chest and says,“What?”even more dramatically a second time, as though he’s expecting they’ll edit the first one out in post-production. “I had them at a safe house! Kostya told me to collect them. They weren’t kidnapped.”

Kostya recoils at the accusation. “Why would I tell you to kidnap Vasily’s sister?”

“It wasn’t kidnapping!” Dima shouts back.

And then Kseniya, God love her, whimpers, “You kidnapped me? You kidnapped us? You told me you were bringing me back to my family! Was it you who tied us up?”

“What are you talking about? Who tied you up?”

“I don’t know! It was someone in a suit and a ski mask. It could have been you!”

I decide to change my mental Oscar vote to Alex, in one of those sleeper roles where they don’t really stand out and you don’t notice they’re actually a critical character until they deliver a bombshell. Alex’s bombshell?

“Who died?”

Ana’s shoulders jerk. She’s holding back a laugh. None of this should be funny, but it’s so ridiculous from our elevated, informed perspective that it’s hard not to.

Kseniya screams at the news. Ugly screams. Wails. I know for a fact she can’t cry on command, it was always her downfall growing up, but she makes up for it in hysterics. The undercover agents are all starting to move in on Dima with small, measured steps, so I’m hoping Benedetti communicated to whichever agency they’re from that Dima is not the bad guy here. Or, if not, that no one’s super trigger happy. They had to have seen how many people in attendance are packing, so they should know if they do fire, it’s going to end in a massacre.

My son’s down there.

I get queasy again.

Ana grabs my hand before I can reach for my pocket, and that does help some.

With the attention shifted to Dima and Kseniya, Tony and Kostya are both watching with unabashed glee. This is going better than they planned, I’m sure. Tony’s grin remains, but Kostya’s stretches into a grimace as Kseniya shouts, “Was it you, Dima? Did you kill them?”

Ooh, those suicides were supposed to remain suicides. I wonder if autopsies would have been done, if they would have been suspicious of the subcutaneously-administered heroin. Are the needles different sizes? Would they have been able to tell just from my corpse that it was actually a syringe swapped with my migraine medicine?

There’s no such thing as a perfect murder. Kostya knows that as well as anyone here.

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