Page 59 of Sweet Ruin

“One minute,” Kane says.

“Should I come⁠—”

“Stay where it’s lit.”

I shrink back into the pool of light beneath the closest streetlamp.

As I watch, a man ducks out under the gate. He’s older, weathered, in a Knicks beanie and a work coat. When he sees Kane, his shoulders rise up around his ears and he bends into an awkward half-bow.

“Mr. Makov.”

“Sasha.” Kane stands tall. “You know why I’m here.”

“I got most of it. I got most of it together, I swear to God⁠—”

“How much is most?”

“Not all.”

“That’s not what I asked, Sasha.”

The man tries to reply, but he’s shaking so badly he can’t get the words out. The cigarette he was smoking falls from his lip and hisses in the snow.

Eventually, the man manages to stammer out a number.

Kane sighs and rubs his temples. Then he says, “You have until Friday. You bring it to Niko at the yard. Not to me, not to the office. Niko, at the yard, Friday.”

“Friday,” the man agrees, nodding so hard that I’m worried his head is going to fall off into the snow just like his cigarette did. “Yes. Friday.”

“If it’s Saturday, I come back and we will be having a much different conversation.”

“It won’t be Saturday. Mr. Makov, I swear to you, it won’t be⁠—”

“Good,” Kane says. “Go home, Sasha. It’s Christmas.”

And that’s it.

Under five minutes, the entire thing. Kane never took his hands out of his pockets, and the man in the beanie ducked back under his own gate.

Kane comes back to me and adjusts his cuff. The sedan goes past us again. The men lurk at their hundred-foot distance.

What was this? A lesson? A demonstration? A warning that I’ll be worse off than Sasha if I don’t do what Kane wants?

Or is this merely another day in the life of Kane Makov?

I’m going to go ahead and update my mental model. The man standing in front of me in an open black shirt in twenty-six-degree weather is not eccentric. He’s not charming. He’s definitely not fucking nice.

He might’ve given me his coat, offered me his phone, stopped me from falling, said I could go.

But none of that was out of the kindness of his heart.

It was just proof that it wouldn’t change what happens to me next.

He looks at me. Green eyes shine bright against the darkness and the blue-tinged snow. Flakes of the stuff have started to come down around us, light and dancing like spilled sugar in the bakery. He’s huge and I’m so very alone.

He opens his mouth. Full lips parting, a peek of tongue and teeth.

And then he says…