My Darling Husband(56)

I bring my arm down hard, shrieking with fear, feral and black and sticky. At the last second he twists away, using the railing for leverage, hoisting himself up and spinning away. The shank misses his neck and slides down his shoulder into his back, slipping right through the fabric and skin and slamming against something hard. Bunched muscle? His shoulder bone? Whatever it is, it’s like hitting a rock wall, a sudden stop that jangles all the way up my shoulder.

“You bitch,” he howls.

He kicks me off him, the screwdriver snagging in his shirt. There’s a loud ripping noise, then air. My fingers come away empty, the plastic handle wrenched from my grip. My weapon clatters to the floor by his feet, and he shoves it away with a shoe. It skids down the hall and into the bedroom—too far for me to lunge for it, especially considering the weapon in his other hand.

The gun, aimed at my chest.

“Shiiiiit.” I think it. I scream it. Maybe both.

Retaliation comes like a cannon shot, a sudden backhand to the face. I didn’t see it coming, didn’t notice the smooth arc of his arm coming at me until it’s too late. The heel of his wrist clocks me in the ear, but it’s the gun that hits me the hardest. It slams my cheek with a wet crunch, whipping my head backward, blasting stars across my vision, hurling my body into the wall.

I slide down it, and then...nothing. The room swims in and out of focus. There’s a strange ringing in my right ear, but no pain. Only a heavy pressure on my cheek, a dull, empty moment where my brain acknowledges the blow, but it doesn’t hurt. Not yet.

And then the pain arrives, a shattering explosion on the whole right side of my head. Like a sledgehammer to the cheek, like my face was dipped in lava. Dull and sharp at the same time, fire and ice and a million beestings. It’s a sickening agony that short-circuits my brain and lifts me up and out of my body, crowding out every thought except Beatrix, hiding somewhere in this house.

Please, God, don’t let this bring her running.

I suck a breath and hold it, listening for a scream, a flurry of footsteps coming my way, but there’s nothing. Only silence.

Just in case, I heave myself up off the floor, stumbling to a strategic spot in the middle of the room, gasping in pain while puffing myself up, straightening my back and spreading my legs wide, an easy human target to take a bullet meant for my daughter.

Not happening.

Not today.

“You’re going to regret that.”

I press a hand to my throbbing cheek and glare, my eyes welling with hot, angry tears.

The only thing I regret, asshole, is that I missed.



C A M


5:51 p.m.


Maxim Petrakis’s office is housed on the back end of a strip club, one of the seven he owns in the city, and smack in the middle of a seedy thoroughfare known for its massage parlors and streetwalkers. The parking lot is packed with the predinner crowd, shift workers and folks sneaking in a pit stop on their way home from the office.

Last stop on the desperation highway—for them and for me.

I find a spot at the edge and slide out of the truck into air heavy with noise—the steady bass beating through the club walls, the traffic like crashing ocean waves on the overpass ahead.

I jog across the pavement for a door most patrons wouldn’t even notice. Plain, unmarked, unremarkable. A smooth slice of solid steel set flush into the brick, and painted the same bright white. No handle, nothing at all to grab on to—which is probably a good thing, since whoever tries to bust through uninvited is likely to get shot.

A male voice booms from a tiny speaker built into the wall. “Sir, the entrance is on the opposite side of the building.”

I tilt my face to the camera hanging from the roofline just above the door. “Cameron Lasky. Mr. Petrakis is expecting—”

There’s a buzzing, followed by a sharp click. I lean on the door with a shoulder, and it swings open to reveal a wall of bouncers. Two giant men, both Black, both heavily armed. One of them tells me to spread it, then pats me down with hands the size of my feet.

“I guess it’s a good thing I left my gun in the truck, huh?”

Neither bouncer cracks a smile.

They separate, opening the view down a clean, modern hallway. Glass-lined rooms, polished concrete floors, LED lighting. The music is louder here, but not deafening because these rooms are soundproofed, fireproofed, bulletproofed, every other proofed you can think of. Every dollar that gets shoved across the bar or tucked into a stripper’s G-string gets counted and double counted here, millions and millions of them per year. Unlike in the restaurant business, Maxim’s safes are bursting with cash.

“Third door on the left,” one of the bouncers says.

I thank him despite knowing the way—and even if I didn’t, the cloud of smoke pouring out of the open door would be a big, fat clue. Maxim Petrakis doesn’t give a shit about the state’s Smokefree Air Act. He’s spent his entire career skirting laws and ignoring regulations, and there’s not a politician or policeman in Georgia who can make him stop now. If you don’t like your boss puffing on a cigarette all day long, then don’t work here. It’s as simple as that.

He’s wrapping up a call on speakerphone, the only piece of technology on his glass-topped desk. I give him a bit of space and wait in the doorway.

“That’s not what we agreed to, Tony. It’s not even close.”