Page 157 of Ruthless Sin
A photograph.
Small. Black-and-white. Two girls in a garden. The older with dark hair pinned. The wooden cross at her throat. The younger with blonde hair down. Looking up at the older girl with all the worship a small child can carry.
Yelena and Mila.
I haven’t seen Mila as a child.
My chest pulls tight. My throat closes around whatever was going to come next.
I put the photograph in the inner pocket of my jacket.
The back room is empty.
The lights are off except the lamp at Izzy’s station, which she left on so the search she’s running can hum overnight.
I pick up the wooden cross from the table.
I turn it once in my fingers.
I take from my pocket the velvet bag. Mama’s bag. The cufflinks are in my watch pocket now. The bag is empty.
I put the cross in the bag.
I close it.
I put the bag in the inside pocket of my jacket beside the photograph.
I walk upstairs.
The corridor outside my door.
Her wing is dark. She’s behind that wall somewhere, not twenty feet. My hands go still at my sides. My breath comeswrong, slow and deliberate, because otherwise it won’t come at all.
Not tonight.
I open the door of my own bedroom.
I take the velvet bag and the photograph out of my pocket.
I set them on the nightstand. The bag beside the lamp. The photograph beside the bag.
Two objects.
I’m going to give them to her.
After.
Not before.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
The mattress holds. The room is dark and quiet and I think about her walking through the gate of Casa Lucia tomorrow. The crosshairs in red. Me on the curb. Her back to me. The way her shoulders were in that photograph, the set of them, not knowing. My hands tighten on my thighs.
She doesn’t know I’m already at the curb. She doesn’t know she’s been the only thing I haven’t let myself want in three years. She will, after. When it’s safe to tell her.
My jaw stays locked.
I don’t lie down.
