Page 75 of Fate and Family

“You’re The Octopus,” she says, like this explains the last five minutes. Minutes that are easily in the top five most terrifying moments of my dramatic life.

“Huh?”

She wipes her face with the palm of her hand. “You’ve spent the last year rescuing women from sex dens controlled by The Deviant. You have a great kid, you’re thriving in an impossible situation, and you love me. Me!” her head hangs as she whispers, “I ran away from you because I thought it was the only way to keep you safe. But you don’t need me to keep you safe, and it was all useless. I wasted our time.”

“But you’re making the world safer. You’re doing important things. You’re serving your country and building a future for Ian.” I don’t understand why she’s upset.

She buttons up her shirt. “In the eyes of the law and morality, you are a bad person who is doing good things and making a clear and visible difference in the world. And according to the same laws, I’m a good person who is doing terrible things in order to make the world better, and I have nothing to show for it.” She’s quiet for a few moments. Maybe she’s going to leave it there. But then she says, “And now I’ve ruined our life-altering sex with an existential crisis,” she pauses and looks around, “in a hotel office.” She furrows her brows. “Did the hotel not have any rooms?”

“Um, I didn’t check.”

She motions around the space. “Why here?”

I swallow and sit back a little, out of potential harm’s range. “Um, I wanted to fuck you against a desk.”

She nods. “And you’ve had that fantasy for years now.”

“Yeah.” I bite my lip.

“And you chose today to act on it.”

Ok, now this is getting rough. “Yes. I wasn’t expecting to see you, and I was in a good mood, and for once things weren’t total shit at home.”

“Hmm.” she finishes buttoning up. “Isn’t there a desk where you work… where we would’ve had access to all the sexy stuff?”

“Yes. I’m beginning to see the problem here.”

“I love you, too, but you are terrible at planning,” she says as she pulls her skirt some more. “Are you going to take us to Ikea for our anniversary?” She pauses. “I mean, that might not be a bad idea. Lots of desks, and the food is cheap but shockingly good.”

I sit on the floor with my knees to my chest, grinning like a fool. “You said you love me.”

She shrugs. “You’ve been dropping it in casual conversation for a while now, I’m just slow to say it.”

The evening replays in my head. “We need new burner phones.”

Katya nods. “I’ll get on that.” She pushes my hair off my face. “You should check on Izzy.”

Getting up off the floor seems like a monumental effort. My knees crack and my thighs burn. I need to do more cardio. My phone seems so far away in my jacket pocket, and it’s all the way across the room. A whole two steps away. Ugh.

I call Uri. “How’s Izzy?”

He’s silent for a moment. “Shit! I’ll call you back.”

My girlfriend sighs as she lifts herself off the chair. “That doesn’t bode well.”

We collect our things and head back to the lobby. At three in the morning, there’s no one here. My phone rings again.

Uri gasps. “They’re moving her to a safe house.”

“What the fuck happened?”

“Long story short, her ex came by a little while ago and nailed a dead cat to her door.”

Katya grabs my arm. “What? How do you know all this?”

Uri sighs. “I called Markus. He works for Mastodon. But we got to talking and I forgot.”

“Where was he?”

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