Page 19 of Rapunzel Is Losing It

I sighed and unzipped the damn thing. It held a phone, a key badge on a black lanyard, and an unloaded gun. I pocketed the phone and threw on the lanyard. Then I took the gun out, passed it from hand to hand, turned and twisted it, before dropping it back in the bag. With my fingerprints all over it, it was an easy insurance policy.

“Thought you’d make me beg,” Luka chuckled.

“I’m not stupid enough to think I have a choice in any of this,” I replied and got out of the car.

Petya didn’t need a would-be murder weapon with my prints on it. He already had the perfect insurance policy. She was tall, blonde, whip-smart and sometimes too kind for her own good.

“Your key will get you through the gate,” Luka explained, distracting me before my thoughts could turn back to the five minutes that had been replaying on my mind since Friday, “and through most doors inside. Every room automatically locks now, so keep that damn thing on you or you’ll get locked in the kitchen or something.”

I acknowledged his explanations with silence, while he held his own pass against a scanner by the door, then lowered his head to the scanner.

“All doorsintothe house have face scan, too,” he said, “we’ll just grab that off your phone once it’s set up.”

Petya had to be pulling big shit if he’d beefed up his security to automatic face scans. I’d never been much interested in the business, but at least this meant I wouldn’t have to memorize daily changing key codes anymore.

“Yury has agreed to come back to train you.”

“Did he? Did heagree?” I couldn’t help the sarcasm dripping through.

Luka shot me an exasperated look over his shoulder that almost startled me. He used to be amused by my sarcasm, while his humor had just been outright dark. That was the thing about growing up in a place like this. You had to take its power. If you couldn’t make fun of the dark, it would kill you sooner or later.

We passed the white marble entryway with its large staircase, and took the hallway to the living room at the back of the house. Luka did have to scan his pass at every goddamn door, each one of them snapping shut behind us.

For a split second I considered bringing the mechanism up to Cordelia, but immediately thought better of it. She would feel safer for about twenty minutes before going to grab something from the kitchen and locking herself in because she’d left the key on her desk. As forgetful as she was sometimes, I knew she still remembered kissing me. She was a horrible actress and an evenworse liar. Forgetting her key or her phone was one thing, but forgetting the way her teeth had skimmed over my bottom lip?

“We went with the last measurements we had on file,” Luka pointed at the two bags on the sofa. One was a brand new gym bag, thick fabric strained by its contents. The other was my old familiar fight night bag. The UFC logo was scratched up and the right handle was fraying around the edges.

If they were gunning for any sentimental reaction, they had misjudged me. At fights, they threw plenty of new branded bags, caps and jerseys at you. The only reason I’d kept that battered thing was because my uncle hated it. He had a good poker face and never reacted to the bag, but his need to always have the biggest, best and shiniest toys wasn’t a secret.

Just ask whatever twenty-something girl he had currently wifed.

I dropped onto the sofa next to the bags and raised my brows at Luka, still not deeming him worthy of actual conversation.

“Let’s get started,” he sighed. Luka had a checklist prepared, and we spent the day going through it.

Not talking to Luka would have been stranger if I didn’t have that small voice in the back of my head, reminding me that he’d sold me out. He was the reason Cordelia was in danger. Whatever loyalty I might have felt towards him six years ago had gone cold.

So I let him poke and prod and measure me.

I signed whatever papers he laid out.

I went through all the motions of the day like a cheap hooker who didn’t get paid enough to fake it.

“Oh man,” a young, clear voice interrupted us halfway through setting up the training schedule on my new phone, “hate to see youhere, Vitya, but it’sgoodto see you.”

I raised my brows at the young woman standing in the doorway, still clutching the door handle. She was in her earlytwenties, athletic enough to be of some use, but not muscular enough to be part of the security detail on the grounds. Even if she’d grown a few inches, and her face had slimmed down, the mane of brown corkscrew curls gave her away. They’d grown from her shoulders to her waist over the last few years.

“Irina, not now,” Luka groaned in the exact same tone I’d heard a million times over.

For the first time that day, my stomach flipped.

“Shut up, dumbass,” Irina yapped back. Just like always. Her cheeks puffed up, and her eyes narrowed. For a moment, we were dumb kids bickering over who got the remote.

Irina stepped forward and the memory shattered. She was carrying. Irina had a gun.

I stayed quiet, tilting my chin, waiting for her to get closer. She opened her arms, and I got up and hugged her, because when someone with a gun asked for a hug, you didn’t say no. Her arms wrapped around me but her head barely grazed my chin. Still tiny. Tiny Irina was carrying a gun.

It made no sense, and all the sense in the world.

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