“That’s awful.”
“Yeah, it’s awful. I lived with my grandmom for a while but I was a little too much for her to handle. I dropped out of high school and struck out on my own when I turned sixteen.”
“What’d you do to survive? I mean, you were sixteen.”
He shrugged, ran his hands over the steering wheel. “You can probably guess. A little of this, a little of that. Robbed people, broke into stores, got into fights. Joined a few gangs. Crashed on couches. Petty shit for a while, at least until I met Hedeon.”
“That’s when things turned around for you and made you into the sterling, upstanding gentleman you are today, I guess.”
“Exactly.” He laughed. “You think I’m rough now, but you should’ve known me then. I was young and invincible, and the idea of showing another human compassion was a foreign concept to me.”
“Oh, what, and now you’re basically Mother Theresa?”
He snorted. “Gran always said she was a fraud.”
“Yikes. Rough.”
“Gran was like that. But no, I’m not Mother Theresa. I’m just the guy that decided your life wasn’t disposable.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah, okay, that’s fair. I guess I do need to cut you some slack.”
He inclined his head and stared out the windshield. A bus rolled past crammed with bodies. A small group of teenagers carrying skateboards jostled each other down the sidewalk. Two businessmen in suits stepped out of a bar, blinked at the light, started smoking. The city pulsed around us like a rotten heart, or a bleeding lung. I tried not to look too close, but once I saw it, I couldn’t see anything else.
All the corruption. All the violence.
Maybe I was just bitter. I’d lost everything I knew in the world. My own family tried to kill me and now I was working with the enemy. I was barely holding it together.
Philly once felt like heaven. The bustle, the commotion. I loved getting lost in crowds and watching people go about their lives. I’d pretend I was one of them, not some forgotten, neglected daughter of a violent mafia.
I pretended I was someone worthwhile.
But it occurred to me, sitting there and watching the storefront, that for the first time in my life, I wasn’t defined by my family. They didn’t have control of me anymore. Uncle Maksim’s word wasn’t law.
Not for me, not anymore.
“Look.”
Leo’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. “Where?”
“Those two.” He nodded toward the shop. “Walking past the front.”
I squinted and saw the guys he was looking at. Two men in their twenties wearing sweatshirts and jeans. They looked like every other guy in the city.
Except they were walking slowly in front of the shop and staring at its window.
“Think they’re just looking for flowers?” I asked. “Maybe the one’s got a date.”
“Maybe, but they’re carrying guns.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“You wouldn’t. Bulge on their backs. Telltale sign.”
“Seems suspect.”
“Watch.”
The two guys moved to the left of the store and headed down the side of the building opposite the park. They stopped in front of a side door and the taller guy leaned his back against the wall and lit up a cigarette while the other knocked.
They waited a minute then the door opened. They said something to someone inside then the smoker put out his cigarette. They went inside and the door closed behind them.
“There we go,” Leo said, voice soft. “That was easier than I expected.”
“What do you mean?”
“Back door. That’s where shit goes down.”
I chewed on my lip and nodded. “Yeah, I think you’re right. It makes sense too. They probably don’t want the guys going through the front if they’re trying to run a legit flower shop.”
“Exactly. Don’t want to scare the little old white ladies.” He turned the car on. “Let’s go. I think I have an idea.”
He pulled out into traffic and I sank lower into my seat. For some reason Leo getting an idea didn’t exactly make me feel safe.
Leo’s ideas tended to be violent in nature.
But that’s what we were doing here. Scouting out a spot to get revenge for Pavel, even though I didn’t particularly like the guy. Even still, I felt a weird sense of anger over what happened to him, and more than a little guilt.
Those men in that flower shop used to be family of a sorts. Maybe I never met them before and never would, but they were a part of the Volkov organization, which meant they mattered to me in some distant and abstract way.
Now though, they were nothing. They were strangers.
They might’ve even been the ones that killed Pavel.
I had to leave my old life behind. As much as it hurt, I couldn’t keep thinking like there was anything for me to go back to.
This was it for me now, like it or not.