Avenge :Romanian Mob Chronicles(71)

“That nurse. Do you know her?” I asked, deciding to shift to what I hoped would be a safer topic.

“Yes. Mother wanted to hire someone, so I found her.”

“Did you check her out?”

Christoph Junior looked insulted. “You think I’d let a stranger into our home, around my mother, my sick father, without checking her out? Do you think you’re the only one with any brains, Anton?”

His eyes glittered, his cheeks puffed out the way they had when we were children and he hadn’t gotten his way. But we weren’t children anymore, and this was a very dangerous game.

“I’m sure you did,” I said. “But no one mentioned her to me, so it was surprising when I found her there.”

“Did she do something to trouble you?”

I thought back to how she’d been with Christoph, how easily she’d handled him, how she hadn’t even blinked an eye when I’d touched her. Outsiders were seldom allowed into our world, and those who were were never given free rein, and I could sense their fear, the tension that came with being around ones like us.

But the woman had shown none of it, had acted as though she was taking care of any regular patient, that I was just an average concerned friend or associate, when, after one look at me, it was obvious I wasn’t. There was nothing I did intentionally, and in fact, I made it a point to dress well, always appear presentable—something else I had learned from Christoph Senior—but clothes, no matter how well tailored, couldn’t hide my build or the tattoos that peeked from underneath them.

People always, always reacted when they saw them. Fear, curiosity, admiration. Something.

But she’d shown nothing.

Suspicion pricked at my brain, made me wonder.

“Did she do something wrong?” Christoph asked, sounding impatient.

“No. She did a very good job, in fact. But you don’t find it strange?”

“Find what strange?”

“She seems pretty cool, pretty smooth,” I said.

“Money has a calming effect on people. And trust me when I say she’s being very well compensated. If she gets out of line, I’ll have you handle her. Now we have a business to attend to,” he said.

The irony of the statement was not lost on me. Funny how when it suited him, we had a business to attend to.

But he was right.

We did have a business to attend to, and I had a nurse to investigate.





Four





Lily





“Sleep well, Mr. Constantin,” I said as I smoothed the covers over the old man’s chest.

“Thank you, Lily,” he replied, voice slightly slurred, soft from the morphine I had only just convinced him to take.

Before I’d closed the door, he was drifting, wrinkled face slack, eyes almost completely closed. He reminded me of so many others I had cared for, close to his end but still fighting. An errant flare of admiration sparked before I stifled it completely.

He was a monster, a killer, had had a hand in destroying my world. I wanted to destroy him. There could be no sympathy for him.

For any of them.

I walked as quietly as I could down the hallway and found Adela Constantin in the living room, and another flare, this one of pity, sparked before it too was snuffed.

I felt for Adela, could see the sadness that she tried to hide and understood all too well how painful it was for her to watch her husband fade day by day. But no matter how much I understood, there could be no sympathy, no mercy for her either. She was as culpable as the rest, if not an active participant, then a beneficiary, more than deserving of her pain and my wrath.

“He’s resting?” she asked when she glanced up at me, her expression pained.

“Yes,” I replied.

She glanced away, but I didn’t miss how her eyes were clouded with that familiar worry I had seen too often in others.

Too often in myself.

It was an unpleasant reminder, and despite my admonitions, I felt another bloom of sympathy, one I didn’t stamp out quickly enough.

“I’ll stay tonight,” I said suddenly. She turned her head sharply. “You know, in case he needs more medicine.”

Adela stared at me, and I could see her refusal on the tip of her tongue, but at the last second, she changed her mind.

“Thank you,” she said.

I nodded and headed toward the small bedroom where I slept and where Christoph’s supplies were stored. I lowered myself into the stuffed armchair and sighed.

What the hell had I been thinking? Offering to help, letting my idiot sympathy, the good part of me, the part that Christoph and his family had tried to destroy, rear up and take control?

I should be reveling in his pain, in hers, not trying to relieve it.

Leaning back in the chair, I looked at the machines, the medicine, all in neat rows, the finest that money could buy, and that cold anger, the feeling that had been my only companion, the thing that had sustained me through the years, came back, slow at first, but growing with every moment until that sympathy had passed.