Page 74 of Dagger in the Sea

I lifted the gun, the cold, hard surface slippery in my hand, and my stomach dropped. I’d held a gun hundreds of thousands of times, now this one, a run of the mill revolver, felt heavy, unusual. My lungs crushed in my chest, my ability to breathe suddenly thwarted. Did that even matter?Enjoy it, this could all be over in a matter of minutes.

Don’t look up. Don’t look at her again. It will kill you. It will.Don’t. Fucking. Do. It.

But I wanted to. Wanted to look in Adri’s eyes once more, be held by them, by her. Would this really be it? My life to end here on an oligarch’s floating empire in the middle of a foreign sea, halfway around the world from home? Home. Home. My parents would never know what happened to me. There’d be no body, no evidence of foul play. No traces.

No trace of me left in the world.

And why should there be? What have you accomplished so far, fucker? What is it you think you deserve?

Ciara’s last words mocked me:“I hope you die alone, you bastard, because that’s what you deserve.”

“Prepare,” Berezin’s voice ordered.

I raised the gun to my temple, an almost silent moan escaping my mouth, my feet pressing into the floor, my thigh muscles pulsing, back rigid, neck straining. Excitement raced around the room, whipping around me like wildfire devouring dried weeds.

“Turo!” that voice cried out, a broken, muffled cry from somewhere far away followed by a stream of Russian, settling like a haze on that tense organ in my chest.

“The music will play,” came Evgeny’s voice. “My favorite piece of Bach’s.”

From the darkness, a young woman in a revealing black evening gown appeared at his side. She held a violin ready on her shoulder. Berezin was cultured even when playing his savage little games. This would be ridiculously insane if it wasn’t really happening to me right now.

But it is.

It is.

“The music will play. And play,” said Evgeny, his eyes lighting up. “And once it stops you must pull the trigger. If you don’t, I will pull my own on you, and that wouldn’t be much fun.” He raised another pistol in his hand.

My elbows ground into the table. My shoulders straining, arms tense as iron, one hand gripping the edge of the table. Pulse raging.

The violin began, and my body lurched, my jaw ground together at the raw edginess of the abrupt chords. I loved Bach. I should be happy he’d be sending me to my final resting place.

The gun pressed against my temple, and I forced my finger to move to the trigger, to the commitment to unleash a bullet.

The bullet that might be there.

Might not be there.

To be or not to be.

The metal was cold. My arm shuddered, my neck.

I shuddered.

The violinist’s bow and arm moved quickly, sawing out my summons, my eulogy.

My battlecry.

Every muscle wound tighter.

Ready. Ready. Ready. Ready. Ready.

I shut my eyes. My mind flew with the stabbing, strident notes of the violin.

My mother’s elegant face, the press of her hand in mine that last morning in Chicago that had made me ache inside, her knowing laugh, the one I missed. Yes, yes, I fucking missed it. Her determined voice from a decade ago.“Turo, you are better than this.”

Better than this.

Am I?

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