She shakes her head.
“Go,” I say to Viktor.
Viktor leaves. I let up off Mira’s mouth, but I keep her there.
“Please,” she whispers, looking up at me with those large brown eyes. “You’re not a bad person.”
She’s wrong about that, but for a second it feels good that she thinks it. Like a good feeling I don’t get to have.
“You’re a decent person.”
“No, baby. Not anymore.”
“He told you all he knows.”
“I doubt it,” I say. “If he has more, this’ll jar his memory.”
“Jar his memory? Sending him his daughter’s bloody finger? All you’ll do is kill him.”
No choice. Once Lazarus hears that the Worland Agency got hit, he’ll know we’re going for Kiro. He could be closing in on Kiro this very minute.
“Please—he can’t handle it. His heart is really bad. Please. Let’s just try my way. To find the person with the key. Dad can’t handle it if he thinks I’m being hurt. If he gets my finger…he can’t handle it.”
Right about here I realize she’s more concerned about her dad seeing her severed finger than about actually having it chopped off her hand. I can’t believe she’s protecting that scumbag. It blows me away. He doesn’t deserve her.
“You’re thinking about it,” she says hopefully.
“That’s not what I’m thinking about.” I stand and set my piece aside. The handkerchief I tied over my burn has long since come loose. I pull it out of my sleeve, stuff it in my pocket, and take off my suit jacket, setting it carefully over the back of the couch.
She watches me wildly.
“You want some booze?”
“Fuck you.”
“It’ll go easier if you’re drunk.” I roll up my sleeves.
She stares, brown eyes wide. “Did you take your jacket off because you don’t want it bloody?”
I don’t answer. Honestly, I can’t imagine cutting off her finger. But I’ve done a lot of bad things I couldn’t have imagined doing beforehand. You put one foot in front of another, and you don’t stop until it’s done.
But this feels different.
“Oh my God,” she says. And then she wraps her arms around herself and begins to sob, there alone on the couch. I look away, unsure what to do with the protective urge she’s inspiring.
I sit by her and pull her into my arms and let her shake and sob. It’s the worst thing I can do. I wish she was drunk. I wish I was drunk. I force myself to think of Kiro. I promised my mother I’d protect him.
It’s Mira’s finger versus Kiro’s death.
“You’ll be fine,” I say softly, holding her tightly. Comforting her for what a monster I have to be to her.
Aldo needs to see we’re serious. We need to panic him, make him try harder.
“Will you take a picture of it?”
“What?”
“Take a picture of it. So I can remember it? I don’t have a picture of it.”
“Of your pinky?”
She holds up her hand and looks at the back, then the front. “I like how it…” I feel her chest convulse with unshed tears.
Bends, I think, finishing the sentence for her. It bends a little bit inward at the knuckle.
Fuck.
“Fine.” I say it like I’m annoyed. I drag her up and over to the window. Beyond her is the moonlit Lake Michigan in all its fake postcard glory. “Which side?”
She looks at her hand front and back. “Back.”
“That’s the side I’d pick, too,” I say.
“What happened to you, Aleksio?”
Your father slit my mom’s and dad’s throats and sent my brothers to the ends of the earth. But I don’t say it. We’re hurting her enough.
“Tell me—”
“I turned into a real bastard, I guess,” I say. “A bastard who’ll take this nice picture for you. Press your hand here.”
She presses it to the window. Her hair has come loose, dark curls around her face, a face I would hate like the devil if Konstantin had his way. I snap a picture with my phone.
When I show her the photo, she starts crying again.
“Come on.” I wrap my arms around her. She’s trembling, turning into a total basket case. Finally I just pick her up and carry her to the couch. I sit down with her still on my lap.
Suddenly she stops crying, seems to stiffen. “Did someone torture you?”
“What?” I ask, startled.
Light as a feather, she touches the area next to my burn scar, traces a small line.
It’s a short caress.
Barely anything.
But it sends a jolt of heat clear through me. She turns up to me, eyes shining with tears. Even after a cry she’s beautiful. “This is a cigarette burn.”
A new memory about her—the one way to stop her from crying was always to show her that someone hurt worse. To give her something to care about outside of herself. That something can’t be me. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” she says, her breath a feather on my nose. “It’s a cigarette burn. Somebody would’ve had to hold it very deliberately to your skin for a very long time.”
Something strange shudders through me. “You want a gold star?”
“Somebody hurt you.”
“Somebody saved me.”
“Whoever did this to you, Aleksio, that person didn’t save you. This is not what a savior does.”
I push down my sleeve, unsure what to do with her sympathy. I should hate it. “You say that because you don’t know.” I adjust her on my lap, let her sit more naturally. Her curves are soft and generous under my touch. I put my gun and my phone aside, just out of her reach. “It was an accident,” I say.
“Doesn’t look like an accident.”
“He didn’t know. He was helping me hide. He was playing a part, and I had to stay invisible. Not move.” For a moment I’m back there letting my arm burn. Trying to be a soldier for mighty Konstantin, the only person I had left in the world. I’m glad she can’t see my face.
“How old were you?”
My hand curls protectively around her hip. I don’t tell people stories from then—not ever. This isn’t even one of the dark stories. But if it gets her mind calmed, things will go easier with the finger. I take a strand of hair between two fingers, thinking I’ve never felt anything so soft. “Nine.”
“Jesus.”
“Shit happens.”
“Shit happens? That’s your astute commentary? Shit happens?”
“You remember Konstantin? The old bodyguard?”
“They said he helped the Valcheks.”
Valcheks didn’t do it, but I don’t argue with her on that. She’s upset enough. “Konstantin saved my life. He got me out of there before they found me. They hunted the two of us everywhere. I mean, we could not stop running. We had no money—we ran with the clothes on our backs. I was actually in PJs.”
“God—”
“Better than being in Spider-Man underwear, right?” I pull her tight to me and put my chin on her head. I shouldn’t be doing this tenderness shit, but the feel of her invades me like a drug.