Page 116 of Boardroom Mask

That’s one hell of a word.

46

KIR

“I will burn your kingdom down if you try to conquer me and mine”

— “Kingdom Come” by The Civil Wars

I feel reborn.

It’s been four days since the baptism in the rain, and I feel like a new fucking man. Words like “peace,” “happiness,” “contentment”—I used to raise my nose and scoff at that shit. If those concepts were even real, which I highly doubted, they were never meant for people like me. The Lazarevs were cursed; I knew that, my father knew that, and my mother learned it the hard way.

Turns out I was wrong. They’re at my fingertips. Those fingertips aren’t clean by any stretch of the imagination, but my little fox lets me touch her with them anyway.

It’s Saturday morning now. I’m sprawled across the couch in my penthouse with my phone balanced on my chest. Outside the windows, the East River is gunmetal gray under a low Decembersky, and a tugboat is puffing its way toward the harbor. Normally, I’d say this week-long storm is a fitting reflection of my internal state.

Not today.

Today, I’m texting Jillian Pierce like a lovesick fucking teenager. I don’t even have the decency to be embarrassed about it.

LITTLE FOX

Tell me something nice. I need to purge the image of Doug eating that rotisserie chicken with his bare hands from my head

Surely it wasn’t that bad.

He was wearing a bib, for fuck’s sake.

I respect a man who comes prepared.

Spoken like someone who once broke into my apartment with a backpack full of zip ties and duct tape.

You say that as if you don’t like being tied up.

She sends an emoji of a monkey covering its eyes in embarrassment.

Sue me.

What are you wearing?

It’s 9 A.M. on a Saturday, Kir. I’m wearing some very ratty pajamas

So not a bib?

I can almost hear her laughing on her end of the text thread, two miles downtown.

No, you horny bastard, not a bib.

Pity. I had a nice mental image going. I’ll pivot to imagining everything you’re not wearing underneath the gray NYU shirt.

How did you know I was— Oh, wait. Camera. You sick fuck.

I turned the camera off.

Since when?!

Since you started putting on shows for it. Took all the fun out of spying.