Torrid (Sordid 2)

14

I played until the sun set, turned on the living room overhead lights, and tried to compose for two more hours. The most frustrating two hours of my life seated in front of a piano. I hated everything I put down. It wasn’t bright enough. It had no lift. The music felt . . . manufactured.

The song I wanted to write was going to be sweeping and moving, but darkness kept creeping in. It threatened every measure. It tainted each chord. I blamed the untuned piano and the boy who seemed to be hiding from me upstairs. How could I write anything in this space that wasn’t ominous? Or sexual?

I fought myself on every note.

Loud rap music had thumped for more than an hour from the room that contained a treadmill, a weight machine, and a rack of free weights. After it cut off, I heard Vasilije go into his bedroom. He’d been in there for a while. Hours. Was he was avoiding me?

I couldn’t turn off my thoughts about him. Should I go up there? I was wasting time sitting at this piano when I should be trying to gain his trust. I needed a partner when the time came to take down my father.

Instead, I stalled and told myself when I finished the song I’d seek him out.

I scribbled another measure in my notebook, slammed down my pencil, and let out a sigh of frustration.

“Having fun?”

I jumped at Vasilije’s voice, making the piano bench squeal across the hardwood floor. I found him standing on the stairs, his gaze cast down on me and his expression unreadable. He wore jeans and a t-shirt, and no holster. No gun, unless it was tucked in the back of his jeans. He looked relaxed, casual, and almost . . . normal. Like any other regular guy.

As he moved down the stairs, I stood from the piano and closed my book. “Sometimes,” I said quietly, “it’s hard to write.”

His eyes were as black as the piano keys. “Has to be, especially when you don’t have any feelings.”

Like I’d done from the beginning with him, when I didn’t know what to say, I said nothing. His feet were bare as he padded across the floor, silently approaching. It was cold in the huge room, or at least it was by the windows. Most of the back of the house was glass. Wasn’t he freezing? Goosebumps lifted on my skin.

“I ordered dinner,” he announced. “Make yourself useful and set the kitchen table.”

Confusion slammed into me. “For you?”

He glared like I was being stupid. “For us.”

Us. The word was unsettling and interesting. I shivered and refused to examine whether it was from a chill, or anticipation. I went hunting in the kitchen for plates and silverware, ignoring the flutter in my stomach. Dinner at the table meant conversation, and I was eager to glean more information from him.

I’d also confessed my darkest secret to him during our last real conversation, and the way he’d looked at me after . . . Like he was proud. It was so wrong, yet it filled me with warmth. We were strangers, but there was a connection too powerful to suppress. We felt less like strangers now.

When I’d found everything I thought we’d need, I sat at the kitchen table, listening to him answer the door and pay the delivery person. Vasilije appeared, set the white plastic bag on the table, and dropped into the seat across from me.

He helped himself to the Chinese takeout, then stared at me expectantly.

I grabbed one of the open cartons and dumped some food on my plate. I wasn’t hungry, but I ate anyway. It gave me something to do while I worked up the nerve to start a conversation. Vasilije didn’t seem like he was going to. He ate quickly and barely looked at me. The screen of his phone was far more interesting than the Russian girl across from him.

“May I ask you something?” I said.

He set the phone down, and his shuttered gaze focused on me. He gave no other indication, but I felt like that was enough for me to proceed.

“How did your parents die?” I knew the answer, but I hoped by asking, it might cause him to open up.

“My mother was killed in a car accident when I was five.” His voice was empty. “My father was like yours. Gunshot. Last April.”

“I’m sorry,” I said automatically. “Did they catch the guy?”

They had.

Ivan worked with the Serbs for years before we turned him to our side. He’d seen how powerful the Russians were becoming, and he’d felt disrespected by Vasilije’s father, Dimitrije. Ivan had been happy to carry out my father’s horrific plan and launch the first strike in the war.

The moment I’d overheard what had been done, how Ivan had burned a house down with a family trapped inside . . . it still haunted me, a year and a half later. I was glad the Markovics had caught him and made that piece of garbage pay with his life. The man who’d killed Ivan was sitting across from me, staring at me with chaos swirling in his eyes.