Page 102 of Coach
“Wrong person?”
“She wasn’t stealing from us. We were mistaken. She informed us of that. And we let her go. With a hefty price for her silence.”
Nothing about what he was saying sounded false to me. But these were professional criminals. They lied for a living.
“If that’s all it was, then where the fuck is she now? Why is her dog half-dead?”
“Her dog,” Konstantin repeated.
“Yes, her dog. She loves that fucking dog and it was out cold on the kitchen floor.”
“It was all she asked when she thought she was about to die,” Konstantin said.
“What…was?” Each word was a sentence.
“She begged that we let the dog out, so you might see she wasn’t being taken care of and take care of her.”
In what she thought were her last moments, she trusted that I would make good on my promise.
“We might be monsters in our own way, but we wouldn’t hurt a dog,” Mikhail said.
“No. Just kill women.”
“Actually,” a female voice said just a second before I felt the cold muzzle of a gun press to the back of my neck, “I believe I’m the only woman-killer here.”
“Not the time, Stas,” Konstantin said, gaze never leaving me.
“Seems like it’s the perfect timing,” Stas shot back, pushing the gun more firmly against my neck. “Lower your gun.”
“Stas,” Konstantin barked.
“Coach!” That was Slash’s voice. Because this wasn’t a clusterfuck enough already.
“Oh, a party,” Stas said.
“Coach,” Slash said over the sound of his boots crunching broken glass. “Saul,” he tried, voice calmer. “Put the fucking gun down.”
“They did something to Este.”
“We didn’t put our hands on her,” Mikhail said. Then, at the cocking of my gun, he added, “Tonight.”
“She was fine when she left work,” Konstantin said.
“Bullshit.”
“Saul, come on. This isn’t the way,” Slash tried. “Stas, seriously?” he asked as he got closer. “How the fuck is that helping?”
“He’s got a gun to my brother’s head.”
“I see that,” Slash said.
I saw him out of my periphery as he moved past me, then quickly shoved Mikhail out of the way to stand in front of the gun himself.
“Calm. The. Fuck. Down.”
My jaw was twitching, my teeth aching from clenching so hard.
“This ain’t you, Saul.”
