Hopeless week after hopeless week is taking its toll on me. I’m weary—deeply bone-tired, soul-tired—in a way that I can’t remember ever feeling before. Even when I first came up to take the reins of my father’s business, I didn’t feel this unending exhaustion.
Nor the desperation. I feel like I’m on the losing end of a brutal chess beatdown, watching one by one as my pawns are taken from me and dumped into the river, bloodied and bruised. Rooks, bishops, knights—all are stripped away and tossed into a dumpster like anonymous bags of trash. My men. They were loyal to me. They had families.
And now they’re dead, for the sake of the side they chose. There’s only me left. A lonely king, with little but himself to rely on.
I shake off the morbid thoughts and stagger to the kitchen, rubbing sleep from my eyes. Breakfast is meager, these days. A few bites of some fruit, if I’m lucky. Not that I have much stomach for eating.
“Didn’t sleep well again?” Eitan enters the kitchen and pours himself a cup of coffee.
“None. Spent half the night counting bodies, the other half counting sheep. Surprisingly, neither helped.”
Eitan snorts, then lifts his ceramic mug to his mouth. “You never know where inspiration strikes.”
I eye the coffee table as Eitan and I enter into the living room together. It’s old-fashioned and wooden, not one of those mass-produced items with veneers over compressed fiber boards, but actual, real wood. My father purchased it from an antiques auction years ago.
I shudder as my eyes scan the surface, strewn with notes and drawings from the meetings I’ve had with Eitan and the rest of the men as we try to come up with a way to take down our enemies. But none of those pieces of paper contain anything remotely useful. And in an hour, we’ll be at it again, talking through every possible angle and brainstorming, only to come up empty-handed.
“Should I call the men in?”
“Not yet.” I need some time to get my thoughts in order, to prepare myself for the inevitable dead-end we’ll meet at the end of the day. My head throbs already, like someone has taken a knife to the inside of my skull. I lean back into the couch. Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to will the pain to go away. “Fuck, this headache is killing me.”
“Do you need something for it?”
I open my eyes and look up at my advisor. “Only a miracle, Eitan. Only a miracle.”
He gives a hollow laugh and settles down into the dusty armchair on the other side of the table. His eyes roam over the map spread out on the table. “Where will it be today?” he mutters, as much to himself as to me. He lets a wandering finger trace over the contours of the city. “Downtown? By the docks? Los Arcos?” He points at each in turn, and I know exactly what he’s picturing:
Blood. Bodies. The taunts of Gino smeared across city sidewalks like hideous graffiti. Men, women, and children—none have been spared.
“Not yet, Eitan,” I say. “For just a few minutes, let me enjoy the silence of the morning and a simple cup of fucking coffee. Then we can face the day.”
I can feel his gaze on me. He’s a good man. He deserves better than this: boarded up in a rat hole, waiting to die. “As you wish, Nikita.”
I let my mind wander. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t take long before she appears in my thoughts. Annie Thornton. The girl who got away. It’s a funny thought, in a morbid sort of way. I picture her doing the most mundane things. Laundry, cooking, studying. I don’t know exactly why, but it’s comforting to think of Annie living a normal life, when mine has been anything but since the moment she entered it. My little bird, winging in and then out of my life ... and leaving utter carnage in her wake.
“Thinking about her, sir?”
I huff. “Am I so obvious?”
“Your face scrunches up every time you do.”
I raise my head slowly and look at him. “She probably went home to her mother by now. I think graduation took place last week. ’Tis the season, you know?”
Before Eitan can respond, the front door swings open and one of our men stumbles inside and collapses in the foyer. Blood seeps onto the carpet beneath him. Eitan and I spring up and race over to his side.
Eitan closes the door and locks it as I drag the man into the living room. Already, the man’s eyes are swollen shut and bloody spit drools from his slack, broken jaw. His face is soaked with congealed blood, and more of it leaks from cuts beneath tears in his clothing. When he tries to speak, his cracked lips fail at the first syllable. He’s messed up in a bad, bad way.
Hearing the commotion, a few of the other soldiers from bedrooms down the hallway come running in and together, we lift him onto the couch. The man is mumbling incoherently. I lean closer to put my ear by his lips, hoping to make out what he’s saying.
But it’s just gibberish. I sigh, frustrated, and lean back. “Clean him up,” I order the soldiers. “We need to figure out what he’s telling us.” I start to stand and walk away, when suddenly, the man grabs my forearm. His grip is surprisingly strong, given his condition, and there’s a new fire and clarity in his eyes.
I watch his lips work as he forces out the words. “Gino ... has ... a ... message.”
Fuck.
The Italian won’t stop until we’re all dead. My headache comes back full force and I rub my temples. “What did he say?”
“He ... has her.”
Panic begins like a cluster of spark plugs in my abdomen. Tension grows in my face and
