Chapter 2
SUSANNA
My phone rang the moment I opened the freezer that night in search of yet another frozen creation for my dinner. I bought enough in bulk each paycheck to last until the next one. Budgeting was an important skill I’d never needed to learn before but had mastered it quickly now.
Glancing at the screen, I saw it was my sister. Wondering what she wanted this time, I hit the green button.
“Mara?”
“Susannaaaaa!” Her loud wail almost made me drop the phone. She sounded as if she was being murdered.
I yanked it away from my ear, shoving the freezer door shut.
“What’s going on? Mara? Are you okay?”
“They sent me his head!” she bellowed.
“What head? Who?”
Was she drunk?
“The mafia!” she screeched. “They shipped Jim’s head to me.”
I stared at the rusty scratch on the fridge’s door, stupefied.
“Just the head?”
“Yes!” she yelled hysterically. “He’s dead!”
“Holy sh...” I sank onto the threadbare pull-out couch that also served as my bed. “They cut off his head?”
“Yes! They said I’m next...” The last words were drowned by her loud sobs.
My hand covered my mouth in horror.
This couldn’t be happening.
“Are you sure it’s his?”
“Of course I’m sure! I know my fiancé, head to toe. Oh, this is so gross,” she wailed. “He has a bad sunburn on his nose. Do you know how gross sunburn looks on a dead body?”
“No, I don’t.” And, frankly, I didn’t want to know. I should feel sorry for Jim. He wasn’t even thirty years old yet, but he’d brought it on himself. In the process, he’d gotten my sister entangled in this mess too. Right now, all I felt toward Jim was anger. “Did you call the police? Or that Jason guy of yours?”
“No.” She broke into tears again. “I’m calling you.”
“Why me? What the hell am I supposed to do about a dead...head?”
“They said they’d kill me if I went to the cops. I don’t know what to do, Susannaaaaa,” she bawled loudly.
“I really don’t know, either.” I wished so badly I didn’t feel as helpless as I was at that moment.
“You’re my sister!” Mara’s tone turned demanding. It’d been two decades since we were toddlers, yet my sister still believed she could get anything she wanted in life just by throwing a tantrum. “You’re in a very similar situation, too, you know.”
“Am I?”
We’d both been lied to and manipulated by the men we thought we could trust. In that respect, Mara was right. We were in exactly the same situation.
Someone knocked on my door. Loudly.
To my already strained nerves, the sound came like a gunshot. I jumped on the couch, jolting in fear.
“Someone is at the door,” I whispered, crouching to hide behind the armrest as if they could see me through the door.
“Don’t open it,” Mara whispered back.
Of course I wouldn’t. But the door was so flimsy, a good kick would be all it took to break in.
“It won't stop them from getting in,” I whimpered, scared out of my wits.
Another knock shattered the silence of my musty-smelling living space.
“Delivery!” a male voice yelled from behind the door.
“Don’t fall for it,” Mara urged me.
As if I would!
Thankfully, next came the sound of footsteps going up the concrete stairs back to the street level.
“He left,” I informed Mara over the phone.
“Are you sure?”
I wasn’t, but what would be the point for whoever it was to stay at my door after pretending to leave? If Bolshoy wished to get rid of me, his thugs could easily kick the door in and wring my neck, shower this place with bullets, cement my feet in a bucket of concrete, or whatever gory things the mafia did to those who wronged them.
Carefully, I creeped to the door, staying low. Keeping the chain on the door, I cracked it open.
There wasn’t a soul behind my door, just a cardboard box on my worn, rubber doormat.
“There’s a box,” I told Mara.
“What is it? Did you order something?” she asked.
The cardboard box was a perfect cube, like something one would ship a soccer ball in. Or...one’s husband’s severed head.
“You’re next!”was written in red letters on the side of the box.
I slammed the door shut.
Bile rose in my throat, my knees weakening. Clasping the phone in my hand, I leaned against the door, then slid down to the floor.
“Susanna?”
The musty air of my apartment suddenly proved impossible to breathe. It rushed in and out of me in pants.
“Mara, we need to get out of this city... Out of the state... The country... The planet. Did you decline that ticket to Aldrai?”
“No, I couldn’t decline. It’s too late. But I asked Jason to do something about it today. He has connections high up in the government—”
“Call him right now; ask him not to do anything.” I scraped a hand over my face, trying to collect my thoughts scattered by panic. “No. Ask him to get a second ticket. For me.”
“Are you going?” She sounded shocked.
“Yes. We both are. Tell them you need to bring a companion for moral support, to help with the kids, or whatever—”
“But, Susanna, I can’t go, remember?” Mara whined. “Jason is about to propose. I feel it—”
“Jason won’t propose to a dead woman, will he? And you will be dead if you stay here.”
I would be dead too. My thoughts whizzed back to the box outside and the words written in something suspiciously red on it.
“You’re next!”
Another bout of nausea rose in my throat.
“We’re getting out of here, Mara. We have to. The sooner, the better. And as far as we can.”