I glance over and nod, forcing a smile. “Thank you.”
“Miss?” He questions when I finally reach the front door. “Do you need anything?”
“No...I—” My grip tightens over the doorknob. “I just need some fresh air. I’ll be right back.”
I twist the lock and push the door open before he can even rise from the couch. Just outside the suite, another guard takes up his post, but he doesn’t say a word when I head toward the elevators. He doesn’t have to.
Vinny has even more men watching me from the shadows. Men ready and waiting to trail me from the concert hall and through the subway, there to step in when two thugs try to rape and mug me in an alley.
Vinny has eyes on me everywhere, but after all these years, I know how to evade them for a few precious minutes. Rather than wait for the elevator, I take the stairs. It’s thirty-four flights to the bottom level. An elegant oak door leads to the main lobby, while a battered metal one opens onto the street.
It’s cold out, and my sweater isn’t a good enough barrier against the mid-October weather. Each breath I take paints theair white, but I relish the chill. It’s bracing after the stifling heat of Vinny’s office. The stench of the city and a dumpster a few feet away almost displaces the spicy scent of blood. I can breathe again, and I take huge, savoring gulps as I stagger two feet down the alley and then turn the corner to skirt the back of another building.
Vinny likes to conduct his business on the Upper East Side. Far away from the riffraff we grew up around, but still close enough to keep an eye on his holdings. It’s the perfectionist in him. The same personality quirk that compels him to carefully plan his days around a clockwork-like schedule. The same way he likes to plan mine.
This little detour is entirely my own, however, and I take my time, walking up at least a block until I reach a familiar stretch of pavement. There are a few metal trash cans here, nestled against the side of what I assume is an old office building. Inside one of them is a stack of old newspapers just ripe for the taking.
I scan the faded print in the dim light cast from a nearby streetlamp while I slip my hand into my pocket and withdraw a flimsy book of matches that managed to survive the excitement tonight. My fingers shake when I strike one, holding the flame as close to my face as I dare. The heat it gives off licks at my skin. Orange and amber paint my vision, spilling across the pavement at my feet. It’s beautiful. It’s terrifying. If I drop this flame into the barrel of newspapers, the fire will spread and become out of control.
Holding it like this creates a precarious balance, similar to the skill required to guide a bow along a narrow row of strings in search of just the right tune. The perfect note. Fire contains a symphony of its own. The crackling embers build to their own silent, destructive crescendo.
“Hey!”
The voice startles me so badly that I jump. The match slips from my fingers and strikes the topmost newspaper. Almost inslow motion, it starts to burn—bright yellow flames at first, then a brilliant orange that dances its way across a headline proclaiming that construction on a new city park will begin next fall.
“Jesus Christ!” A wad of gray fabric smothers the ember’s music midsong. The flames hiss as they’re beaten down to nothing but embers clinging to a ruined hunk of smoking paper.
Vinny’s man is a full three minutes quicker than he was last time. I can’t hide the sigh of disappointment that shoots out, tainting the air gray, as I turn to face him, fully prepared to obey the subtle command of, “Let’s get you inside, miss.”
But I didn’t expect the hand gripping my wrist. Vinny’s men never touch me—one of the many rules pertaining to the care of his property. Whoever he is, his fingers are callused and rough with grime and dirt. Unmanicured. Unpolished. Unsanitized.
My brain counts the surmounting flaws while my eyes take him in. He’s not wearing a suit, just a gray hoodie and jeans, another gross violation. Vinny once beat a man to death for wearing jeans on the job.“Unpro-fucking-fessional!”he’d snarled in between the blows of his pistol-turned-bludgeoning weapon.
“Aren’t you a little too old to be playing with matches?”
I flinch. His voice lacks a distinct accent. Vinny prefers “imported” men to do his dirty work rather than Americans. I don’t know how to process it. Any of it.
My eyes linger on his face—or what little of it I can make out in the dark. His hair is too long. A line of dark stubble covers his strong chin. It’s impossible to make out his eye color, but I guess something light.Blue? Greenmaybe?
He towers over me. Almost as tall as Vinny but with none of that imposing bulk. This man is almost lean in build, but his grip is firm. I can’t pull my hand away easily, not that I try to. Those thugs in the alley smelled like alcohol and felt like sandpaper. This man smells like...
A sudden breeze glances off the brick walls, displacing hisscent before I can decipher it fully. Cigarette smoke. Musk. Cologne?
“You a mute or something?” he asks. He sounds harsh on the surface, but there’s an almost amusing note hidden between the words like a soprano almost smothered amongst altos.
Alarm floods my veins. I should scream for one of Vinny’s men. Paranoia is one of Vinny’s dominant traits, and his money allows him to indulge in it to the fullest. From what little information I’ve guessed in a few short months, he even posted some of his stooges on the rooftops. A few more work as cab drivers who pretend to be blind to any passenger but his own men.
I wait, holding my breath. Seconds tick by while the stranger still speaks—but no one comes.
“Be more careful,” he says while letting my wrist go. “It’s no fun getting busted for arson—”
“I wasn’t playing with matches.” The voice sounds like me, but it isn’t a scream. It isn’t a plea for Vinny or one of his goons to come running. It was a whisper, almost, as if I didn’t want to be heard above the barrage of honking horns drifting from the main street.
“Oh, really? Do you prefer the term ‘playing with fire,’ then?”
I frown at that. “I prefer playing with...light.” My tongue wrestles to convey the words in English. Vinny loathes my accent despite his preference for it in workers.
This man doesn’t seem fazed by it. “Withlight, huh? You a pyro or something?”
