Dangerous Games by J.T. Geissinger

Author:J.T. Geissinger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

EVA

I pray.

On my knees, next to the bed, out of a lifetime of habit. Dear Lord, please hear me. Dear Lord, please help me. Dear Lord, if you were standing in front of me now, I’d kick you right in your holy balls, you sanctimonious prick.

Why give me something so beautiful only to snatch it away? What’s the higher purpose in that? What could possibly be the point?

Yes, yes, I know. Suffering is the point. Testing my faith is the point. Seeing how high a mountain of shit I’m willing to climb in your name is the point.

Hallelujah.

Father, forgive me, but I just now realized you and Dimitri have a lot more in common than I thought.

I shift my weight from knee to knee, wincing at the stiffness in my legs. It’s nothing compared to the stiffness in the rest of me, body and soul.

Naz is dead. The only man who ever made me feel safe and loved and seen is dead.

Yet here I am, surviving. Staring at this expensive white silk duvet cover, growing more and more atheist by the breath, wanting nothing more than to paint this whole room with Dimitri’s blood.

I’m losing it.

Maybe I never had it to begin with.

Maybe I’m an artificial snowflake inside a plastic snow globe being shaken by a child in an alien galaxy in another dimension, millions of light-years away.

I’d cry if I weren’t so stunned. I’m that deer straddling the double yellow lines in the middle of the highway, too shocked by the huge steel grille of the eighteen-wheeler bearing down on me to have the presence of mind to jump out of the way.

I don’t bother turning when I hear a knock on the door. I simply wait for whatever comes.

“Gospozha?”

It’s Stefan. Poor Stefan, who recently lost someone, too. I can’t help but feel Vlad’s death was my fault, though it was Dimitri who pulled the trigger. In a way, Dimitri was right: I should have known better. I knew the kind of devil I was dealing with.

So the body count to date is three. The Wolf—Dimitri’s henchman sent to New York to kidnap me—the Wolf’s companion, and Vlad. Four, actually, if I count Naz, who’d still be alive if he’d never met me.

And that angry dog at the apartment, too. So five.

No—that isn’t it, either. How many of Dimitri’s soldiers went to their final reward during that gun battle in the living room? Eight? Ten? Let’s split the difference at nine. And let’s not forget Raphael and the captain of the Silver Shadow, and the number is up to a whopping sixteen lives snuffed out, directly or indirectly, because of me.

Well. I’m really racking them up. One could say I’ve gone professional.

“Gospozha? May we come in?”

“Sure,” I say dully to the duvet. “I’m just in here counting the corpses.”

The door opens. After a moment, someone clears his throat.

“Madam. I’m here to put the cast on.”

I look over my shoulder. There stand Stefan and the doctor, both looking at me with great concern.

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