Page 36 of Dima's Vision
“Kill me now.”
We watch him as he painfully shuffles past us into the kitchen.
“We need to finish this, Dima,” Kristie murmurs, her earlier sass gone.
“We will,Ved’ma moya.”
She nods up at me. “We will. And youwon’tdie either. Got me? I want to keep you.”
I lean down, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “You have me in this life and the next.”
“How about you just try and stay alive in this one and we’ll go from there?”
Kristie
“You know how I said I knew those two goons?” I ask Dima, eyeing the street address I’ve given him on Google Maps.
“Yeah.” He glances at me, eyes darting back to the road.
“Turns out their office is here,” I turn my phone around so he can see the street view of the address I typed in.
His eyes flick between my phone screen and my face, as if he thinks I’d be shitting him about this. “You’re sure?”
“Look, I know that we haven’t been working together for long, but trust me. I know where everyone within the Mancini Mafia is located. Home addresses, work addresses. Mistresses’ addresses. I knoweverythingabout them. It’s why La Madrina keeps me on retainer. When most of the threats come from inside the family, I have to be on call to neutralize them. So trust me, Iknowthis is the right address.”
He blows out a breath. “I just thought we had more time up our sleeves.”
“For what?” I frown.
“I don’t know. My visions, they came to me every night for weeks. On a rolling loop. I knew you were mine without everlaying eyes on you. It was my mission to save your life. All clues led me to believe you were going to be taken from me on Halloween night. That’s tomorrow.”
“Well, I’m not coming back tomorrow to finish this. I have plans for us. Besides, did the vision tell you it was Halloween night, or did you just presume? Because I start my decorating as soon as the first leaf falls. So really, in actual fact, fake me could have been killed anywhere from September through until now.” I shrug.
“Sometimes it disturbs me how relaxed you are about fake you dying,” he says quietly.
“I know, babe. But remember, thanks to my little special curse, you’ll probably die first.”
He gives me a sour look, making me snort. “So, we’re going in?”
“Fuck yeah.”
He maneuvers the car through the busy New Orleans streets, the Halloween revelry already beginning to build. It’s Devil’s Night, which means there are already people walking the streets in full costume. Bands are playing, in the older parts of the city ghost walks and tours lead people through all the decorated streets. Halloween builds in this city steadily until it reaches fever pitch. Typical that instead of being able to lean into the revelry I’m out here hunting down the other half of my foster brother’s cursed soul. Ugh, why can’t I have anything nice? I side eye the man beside me. OK, well maybe I’ve managed to have one nice thing.
“Oh look! It’s a Mike Wazowski!” I gasp.
Dima throws me a lopsided grin and I reach out, laying my hand over his on the gear stick. I don’t know why but I have a need in my soul to feel his warmth. There is unease clawing at my insides, making my skin feel itchy. I get this feeling now and then, but never before I’ve lost someone, so I’m not fearingfor Dima. Yet. No, this feeling is something new, a whisper that whatever we do today is going to set off a chain of events that there may be no coming back from.
Dima’s fingers tangle with mine as best they can, his thumb gently running against my pinky in a soothing rhythm. I gaze out the window, watching the houses whizz past, the Halloween displays of reapers and witches in front yards, there to not only thrill the children, but to keep up with the neighbors.
A slight fizzing starts at my toes, running up and down my limbs, the familiar excitement taking hold as we get closer to our destination. There is an energy that pulses through me when I know I’m about to take a life. Never an innocent, that’s not what I do. Only the cruel and evil are taken by my hand. All my Mafia hits have been men who deserved it. Abusers, thieves, people who want to hurt others purely for their own gain. I get the irony, that I work for La Madrina, and aren’t we doing the exact same as the men I’m hired to take care of? Yes. And I will atone for my sins when the time comes. Until then, I’m La Madrina’s shield. The person who stands between her and death. The only person who can. And the only person who will be able to stand between the sliver of Maddigan’s soul that has brought ruin and pain to the innocent. Today this ends.
“We’re here,Ved’ma Moya,” Dima murmurs, slowing the car to a halt.
He turns in his seat to face me, his eyes taking in my features as if it’ll be the last time they ever do.
“You good?”
“Da,” His thick finger traces my features, my brow, down the slope of my nose, my lips before he leans in and sips from them in barely a hint of a kiss. He pulls back, eyes searching mine. “Let’s go free your brother’s soul.”
