Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
I pulled the gun out from under my jacket...and then hesitated, staring at her hunched, soaked body and red-rimmed eyes. Something deep inside, something that I hadn’t let function in years, was aching.
I replayed the moment I’d yelled at Valentin, squeezing the memory to make the guilt well up. She’s fucked up everything. Everything was fine until she showed up. I took a deep breath, lifted my gun, and aimed at Alison’s chest…
My finger rubbed against the trigger. It didn’t seem to want to move.
She took my car. She humiliated me. She almost lost me the deal with the Irish. I took another slow breath and took aim again…
Alison gave a sudden, wracking sob and crumpled, and now I could see the tears spilling down her cheeks even through the rain.
I gritted my teeth and squeezed the trigger harder and harder…and then released it. Yebat’! Blya, blya...Blyat’! I shoved the gun back under my jacket and stood there panting, running my hands through my hair, feeling the resolve shatter into pebbles. What am I—What do I—
Alison’s eyes were squeezed shut in agony. She wrapped both arms around herself, and it was the saddest thing I’d ever witnessed, like she had no one in the world to hug her, and—
Suddenly, without consciously willing it, I was marching towards her. As soon as I left the cover of the trees, the rain plastered my hair to my head and soaked my shirt.
Alison opened her eyes and jumped back, startled. “H—Here? You come to a freakin’ funeral?” She shook her head, crying and sniffing. “Why, to mock? Jesus, Gennadiy, that’s pretty low even for you.”
I opened and closed my mouth a few times. “I didn’t come here to mock,” I said at last. I nodded towards the coffin. “Who were they?”
She looked down at the coffin, and all the fight drained out of her again. “My seonsaeng. My teacher.” Her voice went small. “My friend.”
I stared at her. She looked so...broken. I rubbed at my face. “What happened?”
Her lips pressed together tightly. “Cancer.”
Blyat’. A cold earthquake of memories rumbled through me. Without meaning to, I said, “My mother died of cancer.”
Alison looked up at me in shock. And God, she was so small and defenseless and—
Something took hold of me. “After this,” I said tightly, “we go back to normal.”
“After what?”
I put my arms around her and pulled her to my chest. She yelped and jerked, but I wrapped her tight in my arms and held her small, soaked body against me as thunder boomed overhead and the rain drenched us both, and after a moment she relaxed. And then I felt her body jerk again, this time with a sob, and then another and another. Even though I could feel her breasts soft against my chest, it wasn’t sexual. It was about comforting her, soaking up her pain and…
I knew it was just one way. She was hurting, and she needed someone, and I could help her, just for a moment. But…
But deep inside me, there was a cold place, like some windswept, barren island that’s never touched by anyone because the ferocious storms all around it keep everyone at bay. Just for a second, that place felt...connected. I remembered crying myself when I heard my mother was days from death and I wasn’t allowed to visit her. I squeezed Alison tighter and, for a second, it wasn’t just one way.
Then I released her, turned, and stalked off into the rain without looking back.
16
ALISON
“Watcha reading?” asked Caroline, walking in from the break room with two mugs of coffee.
I snapped the paper file shut. “Nothing!”
Caroline passed me my coffee, and I thanked her, my cheeks heating. Why am I embarrassed? I’d been reading about Gennadiy, which was exactly what I was meant to be working on. Except…
Except I’d been reading about his early life. It was a few days after Master Sun’s funeral, and I’d managed to get hold of a file from Russia’s social services. Gennadiy’s mom had died of cancer. And Radimir, Gennadiy, and Valentin had spent their teens locked up in a borstal in Vladivostok: I hadn’t been able to find out what for, but the place sounded pretty grim. Is that what set him on this path?
Was I starting to feel sympathy for him?
My phone rang, and I grabbed it, glad of the distraction. It was Nate, a Chicago PD homicide detective I’d worked with a few times. “You’re on Gennadiy Aristov, right?” he said by way of greeting.
I sat up straighter in my chair. Seizing the bags of cash had put me back in my boss’s good books, and impounding millions of dollars' worth of stolen cars had made the FBI look great. But I hadn’t been able to tie either of them definitively to Gennadiy, and I was still nowhere near being able to arrest him. I only had a few weeks left. If Nate had a tip, I wanted it. “Yeah,” I said eagerly.