Page 75 of Arrow

Sometimes, I counted my breaths to pass the time.

Sometimes, I just let the hours bleed.

The fourth night, Arrow didn’t come home. I roamed the house, checked the time in every room, and pressed my nose to the cold glass, hoping to see headlights up the driveway, or at least the sliver of a silhouette through the moonlight.

I sterilized the kitchen, polished the plates, and organized the condiments in the fridge by shade and acidity until my nails split.

When an engine finally cut through the quiet at 10:54 p.m., I waited at the landing, clutching my arms so hard my biceps threatened to tear.

The person who entered was not Arrow.

It was a girl, barely older than me, in a yellow babydoll dress and a canvas duffel bag slung over one shoulder. She moved through the house as if she owned it—maybe she did. Her blonde hair was hacked off at the collar, not with skill, but with the box-cutter sincerity of someone who needed their reflections dead.

I debated fleeing, but her eyes found me at once.

“You’re Harlowe.” She pronounced it with the flat a, not the w, like she was correcting my name out from under me.

Silence seemed safer.

No use confirming or denying in a place where everyone already had your number.

She laughed, an easy smile ghosting under her breath, and slid off the duffel, setting it on the stone tile with a theatrical thunk.

“He said you wouldn’t have the balls to try the windows—four-inch polycarbonate. You could drop a bomb on this place, and it’d just get shinier.”

She shed her coat—army surplus, blood on one sleeve—and I counted three knives on her. One at the thigh, one in the boot, and a third, bulging in the seam at her hip.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said. “Arrow doesn’t like it when his toys get sharpened by anyone but him.” She stepped in, too close, pinning me with a look of practiced violence. “But I’m polite; I introduce myself.” She stuck out a hand. “Natalya Romanov.”

I’d never met a she-Romanov. The species had been clearly underestimated by me.

“I know who you are.” I shook, but let her feel the sweat pooling between our palms. “You’re his cousin—Dmitri Romanov’s daughter.”

“Once removed,” she snapped, then winked. “The only thing that ever gets removed in this family is the competition, and you’re looking more and more like a competitor.”

She yanked at my wrist, hard enough to pop the fingers out of joint, then dropped my hand like she was handing off a live grenade. A hint of satisfaction sparkled at the edge of her mouth.

“You know what I’m here to do, yeah?”

“No, but I’m sure it doesn’t involve a slumber party,” I said, trying to will my voice into something sharper than the fear prickling under my skin.

Natalya craned her head, sizing me up the way Arrow did—a point-by-point audit of failings and strengths, seeing something I couldn’t.

“He told me not to kill you, but he didn’t say I had to be nice. Tonight, you’re my responsibility. He’s . . . occupied.”

She pronounced it like “op-uh-kied,” drawing out the foreignness until it sandpapered my nerves.

“You’re to stay in the house, and if you try your luck, I get to break your legs. Just the legs, nothing permanent.”

General boredom colored the threat, as if it was her job to enforce rules no one ever respected.

“Do you get paid extra if I make you earn it?” The quiver in my jaw ruined the effect.

Natalya grinned, teeth stained yellow from tobacco, close enough that I smelled the vodka thick on her breath.

“No, darling. I just like the work.”

She straightened, gave me a deliberate leer, then upended her duffel and dumped its contents on the entryway rug. Duct tape, zip ties, a bottle of prescription painkillers, and, to my dawning mortification, a double-pronged steel collar fitted with a medical lock.