Page 76 of Dagger in the Sea

“Now turn around.”

We did.

“Good. Ten paces only, just like Pushkin. Begin.”

The audience emphatically counted to ten, enjoying their part in the grand entertainment. With each number, I took a step. New bets were taken, shouts, the fold and slap of paper bills so very loud, the din of rushed, heated voices. My insides tensed against the jitter of my flesh. Cold purpose filled my every vein. I took in a breath and held it tight. I was ready. Ready to kill.

And Evgeny and this idiot and Pushkin weren’t about to take that away from me.

“We will close the lights,” said Evgeny. “And when they come back on, that is your signal to fire. Lights!”

Engulfed in black darkness, my flesh prickled with ice, the gun a part of my hand. The crowd tittered and babbled. The air thick.

Pulse pounding, pounding, pounding.

Lights.

Fisting the gun, I swiveled in the bright white, everything a blur except for my target.

I fired.

He fell back on a yell, slamming into the floor. I banged the gun down on the table at my side. Cheering exploded, a pandemonium of laughter and whoops. I dragged in a painful breath.

Evgeny clapped, his applause thundering in my ears. “Bravo, Luca. Bravo.”

My insides clenched. I didn’t even get ownership of this fucking victory?

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“He is,” Evgeny said on a laugh. “He is.” Evgeny bowed his head at me. The clapping grew louder, the shuffle of bills louder still.

An arm slid around mine tugging me back, but I couldn’t move. I was metal bones stuck together. Brittle. I would collapse. “Turo,” Adri’s hoarse whisper, the heat of her hand on my cold, numb flesh. “Turo, come.”

Come where? Back to life? Back to functioning in this fucked up circus? How much more? How much more?

Luca brushed past us, a hand touching my arm. He strode off with Berezin.

Adri held on to me, and warm blood pushed through my veins as the crowd jostled around us, leaving the game room. We moved. She murmured words in Greek. Not sweet, not kind, harsh words, brutal words.

Up on deck I gripped the railing, my back stiff, breathing in the damp air. Adriana still held on to me. My anchor.

Those voices echoing in that room ran through my brain, the violinist’s bland face done up with so much makeup, Evgeny’s excitement, the cold, hard metal slick in my sweaty hand. I’d faced myself in that moment, in the flickering, loud darkness, the violin ripping through me.

A stillness took hold of me. A big chasm opened before me. A chasm I’d never wanted to see before, but had always been there. A loneliness I had created, nurtured.

That’s where I festered.

When the music had stopped and it was just me and the gun and the silence, I knew. I knew I had put all that bluster and nothingness there myself, and I stood alone and cold in the bitter wind as it bore down on me.

Adriana wrapped her hands around my arms. “Thank God—”

“Don’t, Adri. Don’t involve God,” I said, my hands pressed into the sides of my pounding skull. “He has nothing to do with this. Nothing at all. Nothing.”

22

Adriana

We sailed backto theAllegrain silence, the water sloshing against the launch, its engine humming confidently, normally as if it were any other night. But it wasn’t. Turo had given me his suit jacket as we’d waited on deck. He wouldn’t look at me as he’d tucked it around me. His warmth lingered on the fabric, his scent, and I breathed it in deeply. A scent of bright lemons and oranges and intriguing musk. A fragrance of yesterday, not now.

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