Page 124 of Boardroom Mask

After that, there’s nothing.

49

KIR

“I will burn for you / Feel pain for you / I will twist the knife and bleed my aching heart”

— #1 Crush by Garbage

I’ve been listening for the motherfucker all night.

But right at the crucial moment, I’d almost forgotten.

I got too absorbed in the shit that was only ever meant to be a decoy. Candles, chicken and wine, the easy pleasures of Jillian’s company… All the things that have slowly but surely lured me way out into deep waters, psychologically speaking. Far past the boundaries of where I was supposed to stop a long fucking time ago.

The blackout was my doing in the first place. I severed the main breaker in the basement utility closet before I ever slipped into her apartment. A building without power is a building without cameras, or lights, or alarms. It’s an invitation, a sitting duck that practically screams,Quack quack, come slay meto a would-be murderer.

That was very intentional. I wanted Lukas’s mercenary to feel comfortable. That way, he’d waltz right up to Jillian’s door thinking he had the advantage.

I wanted to be the last thing he saw when he realized he never stood a chance.

So the blackout was real, yes. But somewhere along the way, the rest of it became real, too. When she started talking about the things that fucking rapistdid to her that robbed her of the sanctity of the one place that was always supposed to be sacred and safe to her—her own body, her own mind—I saw red, and all thoughts of the logistics of my evening and the assassination prevention projection were instantly set aside.

Another man’s hands on her… Shoving her down onto a dank mattress… A lone gray sock her as her only companion…

There aren’t words for what I’d do to that bastard. I’d fillet him. I’d carve every inch of skin from his body. I’d embrace my family’s heritage of violence just to make him hurt, and hurt, and hurt some more. Maybe one day, I’ll get the chance to do exactly that. He can’t have run far. Not far enough to hide from me, at least.

Part of my mind went down that rabbit hole. The rest of me, every other neuron I have, was across that table with her, trying to lend her strength she shouldn’t have to lean on, because it never should have happened to her in the first place. The whole time she spoke, I sat riveted, thinking again and again,This woman is braver than I will ever be.

I got lost in that. In this surge of feeling for her that has no name and knows no end. If the scrape had come thirty seconds earlier, while I was still holding her hand across the table with my pulseroaring in my ears and revenge murder fantasies playing on a loop behind my eyes, I might have been slow.

A quarter-second slow. That’s all it takes in this life.

But I heard it, thank fuck. The scrape of a boot sole on the hallway tile, followed by the faintest metallic click of a suppressor being threaded onto a barrel. Amateurish sounds, really. A professional would have been quieter. Lukas hired cheap, which tells me Lukas is getting desperate.

That’s good. I’ll get to him next.

First, I dismantle his hired killer.

Once Jillian is in the bathroom, I check that the safety is off on my gun. Then I creep across the living room on silent feet, flatten myself against the wall beside the front door, breathing through my mouth, and start counting heartbeats.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

He comes through on six, fast, intended to surprise and stun whoever might be inside.

The door explodes inward and the man rushes the threshold low, suppressed pistol sweeping left where the kitchen table is, where Jillian was sitting thirty seconds ago until I told her to go hide. He’s compact, maybe five-ten, wearing all black with a balaclava pulled down. His form is decent. Elbows tucked,muzzle discipline, kept his entry quick and decisive. But he’s scanning the wrong direction, because he expected to find a woman alone.

He found me instead.

I grab his suppressor with my left hand and wrench the barrel toward the ceiling. His shot goes into the plaster above the doorframe, a muffledthwapthat sends a puff of white dust raining down on both of us. Before he can adjust, I drive the butt of my Makarov into the bridge of his nose. Cartilage crunches. He staggers. I rip the gun out of his grip and toss it behind me down the hall.