A sound pulls my attention to the right, and my whole body starts to shake when I see a man standing near the backdoor. He’s huge, his head only a few inches lower than the top of the door, and he’s dressed all in black. The hood of his sweatshirt is pulled low, keeping his face hidden. When my eyes fall to the gun at his side, everything inside me grows cold.
“Please,” I whisper, and it’s all I can manage. When he doesn’t do anything, I beg in a shaky voice, “Please don’t kill me.”
Without a word, the man turns and leaves, giving me a brief glimpse of his lower cheek and jaw, both covered in a light, dark stubble. He’s gone in seconds, and when I rush to my dad, I know he’s dead before I even check for a pulse. My cell phone is still sitting on the counter, and the call to 911 is barely coherent. I eventually get the words out, and several minutes later, I hear sirens in the distance.
The police find me huddled in the corner, my face buried in Peanut’s soft fur. When I refuse to part with my dog, they give up and let me bring him to the police station. I spend the next several hours going over my story and feeling completely disoriented.
“He was tall, you said?” Officer Jenson asks me yet again. He looks like he’s not that much older than me, and when he scrubs a hand over his reddish blond mustache, I can tell he’s getting frustrated with me.
“Yes, he was tall.”
“But you didn’t see anything else?”
“No. He just left. I barely got a glimpse of his face.”
“You saw his face?” he perks up at this as Officer Roberts walks in. He’s older, more like mid-forties instead of mid-twenties like Jenson, and he clearly doesn’t share his younger partner’s view on staying physically fit for this position. His large gut strains hard against the buttons of his shirt.
“No, not really,” I say with an exhausted sigh. “He turned and I got just a brief glimpse. He had dark stubble. That’s really all I can tell you.”
The cops look at one another before Roberts lays a photo down on the table in front of me, right next to the stale coffee I’ve resisted drinking. The man in the photo is gorgeous in a scary-as-hell kind of way. His dark hair is thick and cut in a short style, his jaw chiseled and covered in a light stubble, and there’s a scar running down the left side of his face and slicing through his cheek. That’s not the scary part, though. It’s his eyes. They’re staring right at the camera, and they’re the coldest damn things I’ve ever seen. They’re completely devoid of all emotion, the stormy grey color just enhancing the overall terrifying feel of the man.
“Who is he?” I ask, my voice barely more than a whisper. I keep my eyes on the photo, unable to pull my gaze away.
“His name is Kirill Chernikov,” Roberts says, “and we believe he’s the man who killed your father.”
I’m so surprised, I meet his eyes. “What? Why?”
Officer Roberts sits in the chair opposite me and rests his hands on his belly. “We picked him up near your house tonight, and he fits the description you gave.”
“I didn’t really give a description,” I remind him, but he chooses to ignore me and instead reaches a paunchy hand across the table and points at Kirill.
“This man is a hitman for the Teterev Bratva. The guy’s a fucking ghost. We think he’s responsible for hundreds of murders all over the city, but so far we’ve never had enough evidence to put him away.”
Roberts breaks out into a smile, and then reins it in when he remembers that we’re here because I just watched my father get murdered.
“With your eyewitness testimony, we can finally get the bastard.”
Jenson chimes in with, “We need to make sure he doesn’t get away with it this time. You have the power to put the man in prison who just murdered your father. Don’t you want that?”
Roberts waves his hand at Jenson, clearly telling the guy to back off a bit, and then he leans in closer, putting his beefy arms on the table between us and softening his expression. “Lydia, we know he did this. He was in the area, he’s a known killer, and he fits the physical description you gave us. This is as cut and dry as it gets.”
“But why would a hitman want to kill my dad?” I shake my head. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
In the same calm voice he’s been using, Roberts says, “Lydia, you’re a smart girl. I know you’re aware of your father’s gambling problem.” He lets out a sigh as if it pains him to say any more, but he continues nonetheless. “The truth is he owed a lot of money, and some of that debt he’d racked up was to some very dangerous men.”
I feel a pang of anger towards my dad’s stupidity for getting involved with the fucking mafia, but then guilt replaces it when I remember it cost him is life. Looking down at the photo of Kirill, I run my fingers through Peanut’s fur, letting his small presence comfort me. I try to imagine the man in the photo standing in our doorway. When I cover part of the photo with my hand, eyeing just the jaw and cheek, I can see how it could be him. They’re both chiseled with dark stubble, and the guy is huge, way taller than the average man with broad shoulders that could easily be the same as the person I saw. What are the odds that a known hitman would be in the same area on the night that my dad is murdered? It’s the only thing that makes sense, and when I start to nod my head, I hear the relieved breath that both officers give.
And just like that, it was a done deal. The next few weeks are an absolute nightmare. I went from being a high school graduate to a clueless adult who has to figure out how to arrange a funeral and find a job. Once the bills start arriving, I nearly have a panic attack. My dad’s savings is enough to keep everything running for a little bit, but it’s not going to last long. I’ve never felt so scared and alone, and I have no idea what the fuck to do. There’s no way in hell I can keep everything going and go to college. I’d briefly spoken to a realtor who made it clear that nothing was selling lately, and if I did manage to sell this place, I’d barely bring in enough to cover what’s owed on it. My only option is to stay here, get a job, and try to keep everything running as usual.
Every night I wake up from nightmares, images of my dad slumped over, except in my dreams, the tall man shrouded in darkness doesn’t let me go. His face becomes Kirill’s, and all I can do is stand frozen and helpless as he raises his gun and fires it at me, hitting me right in the chest, just like he did to my dad. I wake up screaming while Peanut whines and licks my hand, trying to coax me back to reality.
Daily I have to remind myself that my dad is actually dead. I’m so used to not seeing him. In a way, it’s like nothing has changed. I can’t honestly say that I miss him, because I don’t feel like I ever really had him. I mourn him in my own way, though. I mourn the fact that I’ll never get to know him, and I mourn the loss of the only family I had left.
By the time the trial starts, I’m still an emotional wreck, but at least I have a job, and I’m managing to get the bills paid. Thanks to my dad’s life insurance I have enough to cover the lawyer fees, but there’s hardly anything left over. The police assure me that the men my dad owed money to won’t come after me, but I have a hard time believing them. They say that there’s way too much publicity surrounding me right now and that they’d never risk it, but what happens when all the attention dies down? I try not to worry about it, but it’s impossible not to.