Page 7 of Broomsticks and Bloodstains
But my mind kept circling back to her voice in that hallway, the way she’d looked me in the eye when most men twice her size couldn’t. That fear in her throat but defiance in her eyes—like a flame daring the wind to snuff it out. It kept snagging on something inside me that I didn’t care to name. Want had nothing to do with this. Want got men killed—especially men like me.
This was discipline. Containment.
“I’ll handle it,” I replied finally, the words coming out rougher than I intended.
Dima shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Konstantin gave me a long look, one that said he’d known me too long not to hear the hesitation I hadn’t meant to reveal. Enough that it told me he heard the hairline crack beneath the steel. Then he clapped me on the shoulder. “See that you do. Before she becomes more than just a problem.”
The night swallowed his words, but they lingered. Because even as I told myself she was nothing, I knew it already—this felt different.
In the shadows, I left them there among Popov’s immaculate marble and dirty money. The night air tasted like salt and smoke as I cut through the side garden toward the motor court in front of the mansion. One of our SUVs waited under the porte-cochère, black paint swallowing the light. I slid behind the wheel. I preferred driving. Put a weapon in my hand or a road under my tires—either way, I trusted myself more than anyone else.
The gates parted on a whisper. I eased onto the coastal road, headlights off until I’d put two bends between me and the estate. The van’s taillights pulsed ahead, steady as a heartbeat. I let the distance breathe, tucked into the seam between darkness and asphalt, watching. Waiting.
My phone buzzed once. Konstantin.
You moving? he texted.
Yes
His reply came clean and fast.
K: Do not bring Popov’s people into this tonight. We still need the deal. The girl is your thread to tie, not his.
Understood, I typed, then killed the screen and let the dark settle back over me. If it got back to Popov that we were suspicious of the girl, he wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate the potential issue. Popov’s men were nothing but muscle with habits. They liked mess. I preferred finesse.
The van hugged the shoreline along Belt Parkway a few miles before turning inland, toward the city’s glow—the haze that made the horizon look like it was always on fire. We caught the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway before crossing Brooklyn Bridge and took the S Street Viaduct.
We passed silence: shuttered diners, a gas station with one working pump, a strip of closed storefronts with metal grates pulled down like iron eyelids. The farther we drove, the more the road filled with life again—taxis, delivery trucks, a cluster of laughing teens hanging out in a park that had seen better days.
Cautious, I stayed back. Two car lengths. Three when traffic thinned and the street opened up. The driver didn’t check his mirror often. Tired probably. Good.
I let my mind sift over the facts—the way I’d been trained since I was young and hungry and mean: She had access to Popov’s study. She’d heard enough that she was a potential loose end. According to my source, she worked at a small neighborhood pub; her hands knew liquor and beer. Though with her looks and those curves, she may be used to the weight of men’s eyes, she wasn’t a regular employee of the catering company. She wasn’t staff that was trained for an event of that magnitude—her posture wasn’t polished enough. She’d been a last-minute fix. Someone called her in. That meant a friend inside the catering company. Two liabilities, possibly only one if I moved quickly.
A red light pinned us both at an intersection where the city turned from what some would consider rich to what was real. A bodega glowed on the corner, its door propped open, an electronic bell chiming whenever someone ducked in for beer or cigarettes. A man hosed vomit from the curb half a block down. The van idled. When the light flipped green, we rolled.
They exited Bruckner Boulevard and turned again near a commercial district. The catering company’s logo flashed on a sign above a corrugated bay door. The van eased into the lot, backed into a lane, and killed its engine with a cough. I ghosted past and slid into a slot on the street with a view of the exit.
Doors opened. Voices drifted through the night air. Laughter sounded, frayed at the edges with exhaustion. I watched from the quiet, the way I always did—still, patient, invisible. She appeared after a minute, stepping down from the van with her shoes still in one hand. Even under the harsh lot lights and now wearing a beat-up pair of red Converses, she looked like a goddess at midnight.
“Isabella! You forgot your shoes!” one of the other women from the van called out. A woman with sleek long hair turned back. I couldn’t make out the brief conversation between the two women, but it was insignificant.
What mattered was that she quickly caught up to Sofia.
Isabella chattered beside her, hands doing as much talking as her mouth. They touched heads in a private moment followed by giggles. They were obviously friends. I filed the name. Friends made patterns. Patterns made potential targets.
Sofia tilted her head up, studying the warehouse sign like she was memorizing it all over again, then checked her phone. The small things told the truth: the way she shifted her weight from one foot to the other; the way she tensed when a man in a stained apron pushed through the bay door too fast; the way her shoulders dropped when she seemed to recognize him and smiled. Fear. Relief. Not stupid, then. Just human.
I waited while they unloaded trays, stacked crates, signed a clipboard handed to them by a supervisor whose tie had probably surrendered hours ago. When the crew started to scatter, Sofia and Isabella walked out to the street together, the night briefly turning them into shadows before they stepped into the circle of the streetlight. The supervisor called after them—something about payment no later than Monday. Sofia lifted a hand without turning. I watched the angle of her wrist, the looseness of her fingers. Fatigue, but controllable. Not drunk, not sloppy. Good.
A car pulled up—an old sedan, paint the color of coffee. Isabella hopped into the passenger seat and waved. Whoever was driving pulled away quickly, music low and rhythmic. Sofia didn’t get in. She tucked her shoes under her arm and headed toward the corner.
She shrugged on a thigh-length coat to cover the short, sparkling black dress, and I started the SUV.
She took the bus. That told me enough about her bank account to guess at the rest. I didn’t board behind her. Instead, I leapfrogged the bus along its route, catching glimpses of her each time it changed lanes and hissed to a stop—Sofia stood near the rear door, chin up, eyes on the glass, body angled to avoid touch without cowering. Someone jostled her. She shifted, made space. No panic. No helplessness. Simply second nature.
The streetlights stuttered over her mask, where it hung from her elbow, forgotten until we entered Longwood and she slipped it into her bag like something she didn’t want to admit she’d worn.
