Page 113 of Lies He Told Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 1)

She shakes her head, almost sadly. “No, I don’t think I will.” Her face is marked with strain.

I get it now. I’ve got it all backwards. She wants to go, but can’t. I’m the one who needs her to leave.

Right now, there is the aftermath to be dealt with. With her around, it’s too much of a distraction.

“Fine. Then you should leave,” I tell her.

And still she doesn’t move. She’s hoping for an explanation, a promise, anything. But I won’t be able to give her what she wants.

I understand suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, what I have to say to make her go.

“You mean nothing to me.”

Her mouth falls open. Her wide-eyed gaze goes towards me. Imploring, waiting, hoping still. But now, understanding, too. I stare back at her, waiting for her to leave.

Suddenly, she straightens up, lifts her chin. Then, finally, she starts walking away, saying over her shoulder, “Richard Walsh was right about you.”

That hooks me.What the fuck did she just say?

“What do you know?” I snarl after her.

She keeps walking. I follow.

This is madness. Stupid. Pointless. I have to catch her. But she’s running at a jog now, ducking down an alleyway.

“Joy!” I call. She doesn’t so much as pause.

Fine. If she wants to play the game that way, we’ll play.

As I run, I pass the vile underbelly of the city, garbage piled high and rotting. Rats. More dead men. Doors bolted shut. Alley after alley after filthy fucking godforsaken alley.

I duck down one after the other, always to find her at the end of it already, one step ahead.

She knows her way around; I’ll give her that. Too bad I do, too.

I step on a soda can wrong, almost fall—and then I’m sent twenty years in the past.

Osip and I, twelve years old and racing away so fast the open soles of my shitty shoes are slapping on the pavement, slipping away from the angry walrus-sized shopkeeper we just stole a whole bag of fresh shrimp from, staggering after us yelling, as we laugh and laugh and I step on a soda can wrong and almost slip …

Now is not the time for memories.

Especially not with what I’m seeing as I round the corner: Joy, finally in reach. Looks like I finally took the right shortcut.

I grab her. “Who do you think you are?”

Her mouth twists as she struggles. “A homeless worm. A poor pathetic idiot. I’m nothing to you, not anymore.”

Her knee jabs up and into my balls. Agony erupts.

“Fuck!” I roar in pain, doubling over.

“I thought I could trust you,” she snarls. “I was wrong.” And then she races away into the night.

I’m hunched there for several precious seconds, while the pain recedes. By the time I’m able to straighten, she’s gone, leaving only a simmering rage in her trail.

What does she know of Richard Walsh? What does she know of me?

Maybe she lived on the streets, too. But she wasn’t there as long as I was. She didn’t see what I saw. Didn’t learn the lessons I had to learn.

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