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The last knot of tension I’ve been holding in my chest dissolves on a long, quiet exhale. “Thank you, Zevran.”
I reach up, my fingers gently tracing the hard line of his cheekbone. He acts like a ruthless, unfeeling soldier, but under all that brutality and ink, he cares so deeply for the people he protects.
“Thank you for what you did for Emily, too,” I add softly.
A muscle tics sharply in his jaw. His pale eyes cut away from mine, staring out the tinted window at the passing city. “Don’t thank me. It wasn’t enough.”
“It’s enough that you tried,” I tell him gently. “You brought her peace at the end.”
Zevran remains silent, his posture stiff as he continues to stare out at the amber and gold smears of the setting sun.
I think he must carry the weight of every person he couldn’t save, a silent burden he never speaks of.
I think about the woman I used to be. The terrified girl who returned groceries for a few crumpled dollars in change, jumping at every heavy footstep in the hallway.
He couldn’t save everyone, but he saved me.
25
Zevran
Troy Banks has been missing for six days, and I have not slept more than three hours in any of them. My skull feels like it’s packed with broken glass.
His phone hasn’t pinged any towers. His bank accounts haven’t been touched. No transactions, no calls, no ghost of a footprint here in Corvale or over state lines. A small, pathetic prick like Troy should be making noise. Men like him drink too much and talk too much and leave a trail a child could follow.
But Troy Banks has vanished.
I stand in the middle of his kitchen and stare at the bloodstain on the linoleum. Everything is exactly as we left it last week, down to the broken venetian cord and the overturned chair. Nobody has come to clean it up. No one cares that he and Cora are gone.
I cross to the window and look out at the brick wall beyond. This is what Cora looked at every morning. This suffocating view, this cramped kitchen, this life she was trying to escape, one refunded box of detergent at a time.
I swore to her I’d finish her husband. I swore I’d bring her his head so she could finally breathe, and instead, I’m standing in his rot while she waits.
An ordinary man like Troy shouldn’t be able to vanish this cleanly. Either the bastard has backing I didn’t account for, or he’s smarter than he looks. Or he’s already dead in a ditch somewhere, robbing me of the closure I promised Cora.
I pace the kitchen. Four steps forward, four steps back. This kitchen is a coffin.
Cora is safe in my house. I have twelve men on my property and every one of them would take a bullet for her before they let someone through that door. But as long as Banks is breathing, she isn’t free, and until I can put my hands around his throat, I am just a man promising what I can’t deliver.
I drive my fist straight into the drywall beside the window, and plaster explodes over my polished shoes.
I will find Troy Banks, and if he’s not dead already, I will finish him painfully.
The plaster settles around my feet in the heavy silence.
I was fourteen the last time I felt this helpless. The church was cold and smelled of burning wax, and Artem’s coffin was heaped high with white flowers. My sisters were huddled together in a pew, propping each other up. My mother shook with grief.
After the sixth overdose, Artem moved out of our home in Moscow and into a squat with other users, and within two years, he was dead. Overdosed in the living room, the other junkies too high, too worried about their stashes, or too scared of the cops to call for help.
“They didn’t help him,” she wept. “How could they see my baby like that and turn their backs?”
Her words were a knife twisting in my guts. My father sat beside her with his hands on his knees, his jaw set, and his eyes dry. Somewhere during the service, I stopped looking at Artem’s coffin and started looking at him instead.
That, I thought, is how you survive this.
I have been my father’s son ever since.
No attachments. No one close enough to cost me anything. Nobody whose absence could bring me to my knees.
