Right now my peace was gone, and I wanted to take a knife to Kiril’s face and cut it off until he was left as nothing more than a sack of meat and oozing blood. Perhaps that wasn’t a normal and rational thing that most people desired, but I didn’t care. He was a man and most men deserved to die. Most of them deserved a knife in the gut, a flame against their skin and a whole heap of nightmares that I had enough experience to offer out.
He wasn’t even doing anything wrong right now. He was minding his own business, and only moving to either have a drink, swipe at something on his phone, or to run a hand over his stupid buzzcut blonde head. Okay, his hair wasn’t that stupid. Ifanything, I was kind of inspired and for a single second debated shaving my own hair off. Then I remembered I was in the middle of a trauma filled life and making drastic decisions was never smart.
Saying that, though, when Delilah had dyed her hair purple at three in the morning as she drank far too much liquor and I had helped her, she hadn’t had regrets. She’d asked me to do the back of her head so she ‘didn’t look like a wanker’ and I hadn’t minded it because I’d been awake, anyway. I was always awake. But she seemed happy with her new hair and had eagerly offered to do mine, citing that I would look cool with a few stripes of something that I wouldn’t be doing. And though I wasn’t interested in changing my colour, I had once or twice debatedsomethingjust to get that same look in her eyes that seemed almost fun.
But I also debated killing men in their sleep sometimes and until that wasn’t my first point of call when angry, I wouldn’t be doing anything drastic.
Kiril paused his coffee drinking, as he sat on the dark couch opposite me, waiting and watching like he said Beau had asked him to. The simple fact he was near me and kept putting his filthy eyes on me made me want to fight, and yet he seemed to take that as an invitation to speak to me.
“What are you thinking about, Yeva?”He asked, speaking to me in Russian.
It was the only reason I had agreed to let him sit near me without anyone else present. Sapphire had assigned a gangster to watch each of the girls in her house, to make sure we didn’t meet the same fate as my friends had, and Kiril was the only one beside Beau and Sapphire, who spoke the same language as me. Well, Beau had said there were a handful more, but they were all old men and back in Russia, and he figured I would find Kiril theleast offensive. Beau was right. But I still found the irksome man opposite me mildly offensive.
I wanted to kill him, in fact.
“I’m thinking about how much I want to hurt you.”I didn’t lie. I hadn’t lied in years. There were nastier things in the world than telling the truth, and I refused to save other people’s feelings when nobody had ever cared for mine.
“Fair enough.”He swallowed another mouthful of his drink as my hands clenched the armrest and I wondered for the billionth time why I had been asked to come to the living room and wait when I didn’t care for the reunion that was about to take place.
Sapphire and Beau had asked me to do it. They had told me how two of the new banes of my existence were here to speak to me, after offering their souls to Sapphire and the Red Diamonds as an apology to me and to show their appreciation for me being found. They had said how my father had told them all I was dead and now he was dead and all the rest of the nonsense I didn’t care to listen to, for one simple fact. That life belonged to a different woman. It did not belong to me. Iwasdead and there was no going back on that, and I didn’t feel the need to pretend otherwise. Whatever bullshit people thought the old Yeva would have liked to hear was irrelevant.
For some reason though, I hadn’t left the living room. I’d stayed on the chair, letting Kiril watch me and wait with me as though I needed backup – or a bodyguard. He ought to have had a bodyguard from me because he never noticed that I had my gun in the back of my tight blue jeans. Nor did he notice the steak knife I’d stolen out of the kitchen and was hiding in the sleeve of my shirt. Even Diamond had spotted what I’d taken, and she was a child.
A child who had mimicked me and stolen a knife to, which was rather amusing even if it broke my heart to look at her sometimes.
She looked like her mother more with each day that passed, and I missed Carmen far too much.
The living room door opened up, the dark wood creaking, as I debated all the ways I could murder Kiril and hide his body. Despite knowing he was trained better than me, bigger than me, and probably a nightmare for me to carry, my thoughts did not dissipate. I may have been exercising and eating excellently lately, but I had years to go before I could take on monsters like him with ease. I would get there one day, though. I wouldn’t stop until I could. It was one of the few things giving me the motivation to make my fractured brain and soul a little healed.
“What are you thinking about now?”He asked, as a silent Red Diamonds gangster came into the room to drop off two trays filled with drinks and snacks before leaving.
I was on my feet before the trays had touched the table, pouring myself a coffee as I grabbed a handful of berries and some cookies.
“Killing you.”I spoke around a mouthful of a delicious raspberry and white chocolate cookie that I had watched Diamond help Kody make.“Specifically killing you, then hiding your body.”
Kiril slowly got up, taking a moment to refresh his coffee as he pretended he couldn’t see me glaring at him for daring to come near.
“Why?”He asked.
I scoffed and took my seat – the furthest one from Kiril and the door; a thick, cushioned armchair that was probably more expensive than half the stuff in the room, based on how comfortable it was.
“Stupid question.”I said.
“No. Because not only did I only meet you recently, but I’ve done nothing I would consider rude toward you. So have I made you mad somehow, without realizing?”He took his coffee back to his seat, settling down again with his legs spread far too wide.
“You are a man, and men should die.”My words didn’t sound half as angry as I meant them to be on account of the cookie in my mouth, but he heard me anyway.
“Okay then.”He snorted a little despite the anger in my tone.“I see. That’s fine. I like to know what I’m working with, and I thank you for your honesty.”
“What do you mean, working with?”I scoffed again.
“I’m your bodyguard?”He said it like I was slow or something.“Sapphire has assigned a guard to each of you girls until this whole drama is over with, and I was gifted with the pleasure of your company.”
I already knew what he was saying, but I was in the mood to pick faults and argue, so pretended to be uninformed.
“I don’t want you.”Kiril heard me say that clearly as anything.
“I’m the only Red Diamonds member who speaks Russian aside from the Montana’s.”He explained softly.“They don’t make a habit of bringing the Russian side of their family here, and even though Sapphire tried to find a woman, there wasn’t one who spoke your language.”
