“Cal,” she says, “Listen to me! The Bratva and the Braterstwo are coming for you. Maybe Aida, too. They might come to the library opening. They want to kill you.”
He’s silent for a beat, processing this. Then he says, “Are you talking about Mikolaj Wilk and Kolya Kristoff?”
“Kristoff, yes. But not Mikolaj. It’s his lieutenant, Jonas, and some of his men.”
A longer pause.
“Nessa, what’s going on?” Callum asks.
“I’ll explain it all to you,” Nessa says. “In fact, I’ll meet you at the house in . . .” she glances over at me. I hold up a finger. “One hour.”
There’s silence on the other end of the line. Callum is confused, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on right now. He’s been looking for Nessa for weeks, and now she’s calling him out of the blue, not acting like a hostage at all. He’s wondering if this is a trap, if she’s being forced to say this.
“I’m okay,” Nessa assures him. “Just come meet me. Trust me, big brother.”
“I always trust you,” Callum says at once.
“See you soon, then.”
“Love you.”
Nessa ends the call.
I’ve already made a call of my own, to Officer Hernandez. And he’s not too fucking happy about it. He’s meeting us over by the Cook County Jail.
We’ve already armed ourselves out of the stockpile at the safehouse. As Marcel drives, I show Nessa how to load a Glock, and how to chamber a round and make sure the safety’s off. I show her how to aim down the sight and how to gently squeeze the trigger.
“Like this?” she says, practicing with an empty chamber.
“Right,” I say. “Don’t hold it so close to your face or it will hit you on the recoil.”
Nessa remembers the steps perfectly—it is a kind of choreography, after all. But then she lays the gun down in her lap and looks at me seriously.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she says.
“I don’t want you to, either,” I tell her. “This is just in case.”
We drive over to La Villita Park, then we wait.
After about forty minutes, a squad car pulls up next to us. A very irritated-looking Officer Hernandez gets out of the driver’s seat. He glances around to make sure that nobody will see him in this deserted corner of the lot, then he opens his rear door so Dante Gallo can step out.
Dante is still wearing his prison uniform, which looks like a pair of tan doctor’s scrubs with “Cook County DOC” stamped on the back. He doesn’t have proper shoes, just socks and slippers. His hands are cuffed in front of him. The uniform is a bit too small, making him look more enormous than ever. His shoulders strain against the material, and the cuffs pinch his wrists. His dark hair is buzzed off, his face unshaven.
I haul myself out of the Land Rover, with a lot more difficulty. When Dante sees me, his black brows slam down like a guillotine, and his shoulders hunch up like he’s about to charge me, cuffs be damned. That is, until Nessa steps between us. Then Dante looks like he’s seen a ghost.
“Nessa?” he says.
“Don’t be mad,” Nessa pleads. “We’re all on the same side now.”
Dante doesn’t look like he believes that at all.
Hernandez is equally wound up.
“I had to forge the prisoner transfer paperwork,” he hisses at me. “Do you know how much waist-deep shit I’m gonna be in? I can’t just hand him over to you, I’ll be fired! Prosecuted, too.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “You can say you did it all under duress.”
“How in the fuck are they going to believe that?” Hernandez shouts, hitching up his pants below his paunchy belly. “I never agreed to this, I—”
I cut off his rant by shooting him in the leg. Hernandez drops to the ground, wailing and moaning.
“Awww what the FUCK! You fucking Polish bastard—”
“Shut your mouth or I’ll shoot you again,” I tell him.
He stops yelling, but he doesn’t stop groaning. He’s clutching his thigh, blubbering away even though I aimed for the muscle and didn’t even hit any artery or bone. Really, he couldn’t have asked for a cleaner shot.
Turning to Dante I say, “The Russians and half my men are going after Callum Griffin. Can you help us?”
Dante looks at Officer Hernandez rolling around on the pavement, and then back at me.
“Probably,” he says.
He holds up his hands so the chain between the cuffs stretches tight. “Don’t forget the keys,” he says.
I nod to Marcel. He kneels down to take the keys off Hernandez’s belt.
“Better put pressure on that wound,” Marcel says to Hernandez, conversationally.
We all climb back into the Land Rover, Marcel and Dante in the front, Klara, Nessa, and I in the back.
“Those look comfy,” Marcel says to Dante, nodding at his scrubs.
“They are,” Dante agrees. “Food is fucking awful, though.”
Now we’re ready to drive back to Nessa’s house on the lake. I’m leaving my world, and stepping into hers. There’s nothing to stop the Griffins killing me the second I walk through their door.
That’s not what I’m afraid of, however.
I’m afraid of losing my hold on Nessa.
Was she only bound to me because she was my captive?
Or will she want me still, when she has every other option at her fingertips?
There’s only one way to know.
28
Nessa
There’s a novel called You Can’t Go Home Again. It’s about a man who goes away for a time, and when he returns, so much has changed that he’s not really returning to the same place.
Of course, the thing that changed the most is him.
When I finally see my parents’ house again, it is both the most familiar, and the most unfamiliar sight I’ve ever seen. I know its architecture like my own bones. But also, it looks brighter and flatter and simpler than I remember. It’s a lovely house—it just doesn’t have the same spooky grandeur as Mikolaj’s place.
This same strangeness has taken hold of my parents. They’re dressed the same as always, in expensive, well-fitting clothes, their hair nicely cut and styled. But they look older than they did before. They look tired.
It makes me cry when they wrap their arms around me and hug me harder than they ever have before. I’m crying because I missed them so much. And I’m crying because they’re so happy to have their daughter back again. But I’m afraid they don’t have her back—not the same one.
There’s an explosion of outrage when they see Mikolaj. My father is shouting, and his men are threatening to shoot Miko and Marcel, and Mikolaj is silent, not defending himself at all, while I stand in front of him, yelling right back at these people I love, that I’ve been waiting so long to see.
Then Callum and Aida come into the kitchen, and the hugging and crying starts all over again.
It’s a long time before we’ve all calmed down enough to speak rationally.
My father is leaning up against the kitchen island, arms crossed. He’s glaring murderously at Mikolaj, too angry to speak. My mother is pouring drinks for those that want them. I can see her hand trembling as she tries to pour a steady measure of whiskey in each of the glasses.