I see one of the men in the back of the room drop, clutching his stomach. The other two follow my lead and dive behind tables. Simon crawls over to lay on the floor next to me, his lips purple.
The room is filled with the pounding of footsteps, the ring of bullets, and the moans of the fallen man. It is chaos, but I am steady. My heart rate is even as I grab my phone, turn on the front facing camera, and lift it over the table. There are eight shoulders spread out around the room, guns at the ready. Two of them are at the base of the stairs, the other six are spread out in three-foot increments, forming a barrier in front of the stairs. No one here is supposed to get out alive.
But they do not know who is hiding behind the table. If they did, they’d be running.
I look over at one of the chemists. They are not our family’s soldiers, but they are trained like anyone else. He has his gun at the ready, waiting for my order. I nod my head once, twice, and on three, we both turn and fire.
One man falls immediately, my bullet striking him in the neck, blood spraying against the wall like splattered paint. It is a kind of artwork, shooting a man. Years of training, placing the bullet just so. Art is meant to incite a reaction and a bullet certainly does that. The man drops his weapon, his hand flying to his neck. Before he can experience too much pain, I place another bullet in his forehead. He drops to his knees, but before he falls flat on his face, I shoot his friend.
The men expected this ambush to be simple, so they are still in shock, still scrambling to collect themselves. It makes it easy for my men to knock them off. Another two men drop as I chase my second target around the room, firing shot after shot at him. He ducks behind a table, and I wait, gun aimed. It is a deadly game of Whack-a-mole, and it requires patience. His gun pops up first, followed shortly by his head, which I blow off with one shot. His scream dies on his lips as he bleeds out, red seeping out from under the table and spreading across the floor.
There are three men left, and I’m out of bullets. I stash my gun in my pocket and pull out my KA-BAR knife. The blade feels like an old friend in my hand. I crawl past a shivering Simon, wishing I’d killed him just so I wouldn’t have to see him looking so pathetic, and out from behind the table. I slide my feet under me, moving into a crouch. The remaining men are wounded, and they are focused on the back corner where shots are still coming from my men. They do not see me approaching from the side.
I lunge at the first man—a young kid with golden brown hair and a tattoo on his neck. It is half-hidden under the collar of his shirt, so I cannot make it out. When my knife cuts into his side, he spins to fight me off, but I knock his gun from his hand with my left arm and then drive the knife in under his ribs and upward. He freezes for a moment before blood leaks from his mouth.
The man next to him falls from multiple bullets in the chest and stomach. I kick his gun away from him as he falls to the floor, and advance on the last attacker. He is hiding behind a metal table, palm pressing into a wound on his shoulder. He scrambles to lift his gun as I approach, but I drop to my knees and slide next to him, knife pressed to his neck. His eyes go wide, and then they squeeze shut as he drops his weapon.
The blade of my knife is biting into his skin, and I see the same tattoo creeping up from beneath his collar. I slide the blade down, pushing his shirt aside, and I recognize it at once.
“You are with the Furinos?” I ask.
The man answers by squeezing his eyes shut even tighter.
“You should know who is in a room before you attack,” I hiss. “I am Luka Volkov, and I could slit your throat right now.”
His entire body is trembling, blood from his shoulder wound leaking through his clothes and onto the floor. Every ounce of me wants this kill. I feel like a dog who has not been fed, desperate for a hunk of flesh, but warfare is not endless bloodshed. It is tactical.
“But I will not,” I say, pulling the blade back. The man blinks, unbelieving. “Get out of here and tell your boss what happened. Tell him this attack is a declaration of war, and the Volkov family will live up to our merciless reputation.”
He hesitates, and I slash the blade across his cheek, drawing a thin line of blood from the corner of his mouth to his ear. “Go!” I roar.
The man scrambles to his feet and towards the stairs, blood dripping in his wake. As soon as he is gone, I clean my knife with the hem of my shirt and slide it back into place on my hip.
This will not end well.
Eve
I hold up a bag of raisins and a bag of prunes a few inches from the cook’s face.
“Do you see the difference?” I ask. The question is rhetorical. Anyone with eyes could see the difference. And a cook—a properly trained cook—should be able to smell, feel, and sense the difference, as well.
Still, Felix wrinkles his forehead and studies the bags like it is a pop quiz.
“Raisins are small, Felix!” My shouting makes him jump, but I’m far too stressed out to care. “Prunes are huge. As big as a baby’s fist. Raisins are tiny. They taste very different because they start out as different fruits. Do you see the problem?”
He stares at me blankly, and I wonder if being sous chef gives me the authority to fire someone. Because this man has got to go.
“You’ve ruined an entire roast duck, Felix.” I drop the bags on the counter and run a hand down my sweaty face. I grab the towel from my back pocket and towel off. “Throw it out and start again, but use prunes this time.”
He smiles and nods, and I wonder how many times he must have hit his head to be so slow. I motion for another cook to come talk to me. He moves quickly, hands folded behind his back, waiting for my order.
“Chop up the duck and make a confit salad. We can toss it with more raisins, fennel—that kind of thing—and make it work.”
He nods and shuffles away, and I mop my forehead again.
At the start of my shift, I strode into the kitchen like I owned the place. I was finally sous chef to Cal Higgs, genius chef in charge at The Floating Crown. After graduating culinary school, I didn’t know where I’d get a job or where I’d be on the totem pole, and I certainly never imagined I’d be a sous chef so soon, but here I am. And now that I’m here, I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t some sort of trick. Did Cal give into my father’s wishes easily and give me this job because he needed a break from the insanity?
I’ve been assured by several members of staff that the dishwasher, whose name I can’t remember, has been working at the kitchen for over a year, but he seems to be stuck on slow motion tonight. He is washing and drying plates seconds before the cooks are plating them up and sending them back out to the dining room. And two of the cooks, who were apparently dating, decided that the middle of dinner rush would be the perfect time to discuss their relationship, and they broke up. Dylan stormed out without a word, and Sarah, who should be okay since she was the dumper, not the dumpee, is hiding in the bathroom bawling her eyes out. I’ve knocked on the door once every ten minutes for an hour, but she refuses to let me in. Cal has a key, but he has been shut away in his office all night, and I don’t want to go explain what a shitshow the kitchen is, so we are making do. Barely.
“Sarah?” I knock on the door. “If you don’t come out in five minutes, you’re fired.”