Page 13 of Claimed By the BRATVA Grump

"Socks doesn't like men she doesn't know."

"I'll tell him that too."

"Red—" She stops. Her jaw tightens for a second, and I understand it's not about Red. She's listing the cats because the cats are something she can solve, something specific she canhand over and feel like she's still managing something, and she's holding onto that because everything else is outside her control.

I know that mechanism. I've used it myself.

"I'll have him send you a photograph," I say. "When he checks on them."

She looks at me. Something shifts in her expression, a small fracture in the frustration, warmth getting through the frustration the way light gets through a curtain that doesn't quite meet, and she looks away before I can read it fully. "Fine," she says. "Okay. Fine."

She's not fine.

I stand and cross to the windows, partly to check the street below out of habit, mostly because the chair had stopped being far enough. The city comes alive at night. From up here, Calloway Street is eight blocks east and invisible. I know where it is anyway. I suspect I'll always know where it is now, the way you know where a wound is.

She stares at me. The silence runs out to its edge and she doesn't fill it with anything, which is the first time I've known her to resist that impulse.

"I need to talk to Delilah," she says. "Tell her to take a couple of days off. She will have a field day when she finds out I’m at the apartment of the man I molested.”

The edge of her words brings that unfamiliar pull at my mouth, and I know I’m smiling. I don’t even care.

“Well, well, well…” she says, trailing off. “I never thought I’d see the day that Mr Grumpy gave me a smile. Challenge complete.”

“What challenge?” I ask, “And who is Mr Grumpy?”

Her face lights up. A steady shift from frustration and fear to achievement, and maybe almost joy.

“You’re Mr Grumpy, and I made it my personal endeavor to get you to smile.”

“I’m not grumpy,” I argue. “I just don’t get molested very often.”

Her face drops. “Ha ha,” she mutters.

Sammie

I give up on sleep at five forty.

It's not that the bed isn't comfortable. The bed is obscene. The bed has the thread count of a minor European nation and a mattress that took one look at my spine and personally apologized for every mattress that came before it. The problem isn't the bed. The problem is that every time I closed my eyes, my brain helpfully replayed the sound a body makes hitting wet pavement, followed immediately, with no respect for tonal consistency, by the memory of Eduard Federov's hand catching my wrists, and between the two of them I've had maybe three hours, in pieces, none of the pieces restful.

I lie there watching the ceiling go from black to charcoal to gray, and at six I pick up the untraceable phone Eduard gave me and text Delilah, because she'll be awake now and I wasn't about to detonate her Tuesday date withwitnessed a murder, been extracted by Mr Grumpy, more later.

Instead, I type out;Morning. It’s Sammie. Don't panic. I'm safe, I promise, but something happened after close last night and I can't get into it by text. Café stays SHUT today. Don't go in. I mean it Dee. Will call when I can and tell you everything. Love you.

The reply comes in under a minute, because Delilah wakes up the way other people are defibrillated.

Dee:WHAT

Dee:what do you mean SOMETHING HAPPENED

Dee:Sammie?

Dee:whose number is this

Dee:if you don't call me by noon I'm calling the police, the coastguard, and your mother

Me:Not the police. Please. Trust me. Later. Promise.

Dee:the fact that you said not the police is doing NOTHING to calm me down