Zajac holds up a hand to silence him.
His eyes are still fixed on me, waiting for my response.
My mouth is swollen from the blow of the gun, but I speak my words clearly.
“Your men raped my sister, on her way to write her university entrance exams. She was sixteen years old. She was a good girl—kind, gentle, innocent. She wasn’t part of your world. There was no reason to hurt her.”
Zajac’s eyes narrow.
“If you wanted restitution—”
“There is no restitution,” I say bitterly. “She killed herself.”
There’s no sympathy in Zajac’s pale eyes—only calculation. He weighs my words, considering the situation.
Then he looks at Iwan once more.
“Is this true?” he says.
Iwan licks his lips, hesitating. I can see his struggle between his desire to lie, and his fear of his boss. At last he says, “It wasn’t my fault. She—”
The Butcher shoots him right between the eyes. The bullet disappears into Iwan’s skull, leaving a dark, round hole between his eyebrows. His eyes roll back, and he falls to his knees, before toppling over.
A carousel of thoughts spin around in my head. First, relief that Anna’s revenge is complete. Second, disappointment that it was Zajac and not me who pulled the trigger. Third, the realization that it’s my turn to die. Fourth, the understanding that I don’t care. Not even a little bit.
“Thank you,” I say to the Butcher.
He looks me up and down, head to toe. He takes in my torn jeans, my filthy sneakers, my unwashed hair, my lanky frame. He sighs.
“What do you make at the deli?” he says.
“Eight hundred zloty a week,” I say.
He lets out a wheezing sigh—the closest thing to a laugh I’ll ever hear him make.
“You don’t work there anymore,” he says. “You work for me now. Understand?”
I don’t understand at all. But I nod my head.
“Still,” he says grimly. “You killed two of my men. That can’t go unpunished.”
He nods his head toward one of his soldiers. The man unzips the duffle bag lying next to Iwan’s body. He pulls out a machete as long as my arm. The blade is dark with age, but the edge has been sharpened razor fine. The soldier hands the machete to his boss.
The Butcher walks over to an old work table. The top is splintered and it’s missing a leg, but it still stands upright.
“Hold out your hand,” he tells me.
His men have let go of my arms. I’m free to walk over to the table. Free to put my hand down flat on its surface, fingers spread wide.
I feel a strange sense of unreality, like I’m watching myself do this from three feet outside my body.
Zajac raises the cleaver. He brings it whistling down, splitting my pinky in half, right below the first knuckle. This hurts less than the blow from the gun. It only burns, like I dipped my fingertip in flame.
Zajac picks up the little piece of flesh that was once attached to my body. He throws it on top of Iwan’s corpse.
“There,” he says. “All debts are paid.”
Ten Years Later
2
Nessa Griffin
Chicago
I’m driving over to Lake City Ballet, through streets lined with double rows of maple trees, their branches so thick that they almost form an arch overhead. The leaves are deep crimson, drifting down to form crunching drifts in the gutters.
I love Chicago in the fall. Winter is awful, but I won’t mind it if I get to see these brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows a few weeks longer.
I just visited Aida at her new apartment close to Navy Pier. It’s such a cool place—it used to be an old church. You can still see the original bare brick walls in the kitchen, and the huge old wooden beams running across the ceiling like whale ribs. She’s even got a stained-glass window in her bedroom. When we sat on her bed, the sunlight came pouring through, coloring our skin in rainbow hues.
We were eating popcorn and clementines, watching the sixth Harry Potter movie on her laptop. Aida loves fantasy. I’ve come to like it too, from all the things she’s shown me. But I still can’t believe she’s brave enough to eat in bed. My brother is very fastidious.
“Where’s Cal?” I asked her nervously.
“At work,” she said.
My brother just became the newest Alderman of the 43rd Ward. That’s in addition to his position as scion of Chicago’s most successful mafia family.
It always gives me a strange feeling when I think of us that way—as Irish mafia. I’ve never known anything else. To me, my father, brother, sister, and mother are the people who love me and take care of me. I don’t think of them as criminals with blood on their hands.
I’m the youngest in the family, and they try to hide it from me. I’m not part of the business, not the way my older siblings are. Callum is my father’s right hand. Riona is head of our legal counsel. Even my mother is heavily involved in the mechanics of our business.
Then there’s me: the baby. Spoiled, sheltered, protected.
Sometimes I think they want to keep me that way so at least one part of the family stays pure and innocent.
It puts me in a strange position.
I don’t want to do anything wrong—I can’t even crush a bug, and I can’t tell a lie to save my life. My face gets beet red and I start sweating and stammering and I feel like I’m going to throw up if I even try.
On the other hand, sometimes I feel lonely. Like I don’t belong with the rest of them. Like I’m not really part of my own family.
At least Cal married somebody awesome. Aida and I clicked from the start. We’re not alike—she’s bold and funny and never takes shit from anyone. Especially not my brother. At first, it seemed like they’d kill each other. Now I can’t imagine Cal with anybody else.
I wish they would have kept living with us longer, but I get that they want their own space. Unfortunately for them, I intend to keep coming over to visit pretty much every day.
It makes me feel guilty that I don’t have the same relationship with my own sister. Riona’s just so . . . intense. She definitely picked the right line of work—arguing is an Olympic sport for her. Paying her to do it is like paying a duck to swim. I want us to be close the way that other sisters are, but I always feel like she’s barely tolerating me. Like she thinks I’m stupid.
Sometimes I feel stupid. But not today. Today I’m driving over to the ballet theater to see the programs they’ve printed for our newest show. It’s called Bliss. I helped choreograph half the dances, and the idea of actually seeing them performed on the stage makes me so excited I can barely stand it.
My mother put me in ballet classes when I was three years old. I took horseback riding and tennis and cello lessons too, but it was dancing that stuck. I could never get tired of it. I walked everywhere on my toes, with strains of “The Rite of Spring” and the “Pulcinella Suite” floating through my head.
I loved it like I loved breathing. And I was good, too. Very good. The problem is, there’s a difference between being good and being great. A lot of people are good. Only a handful are great. The thousands of hours of sweat and tears are very much the same. But the chasm between talent and genius is as wide as the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, I found myself on the wrong side.