you're too young & eager to love

With Radomir in the doorway, even Chason, usually so bold and daring with his stares, ducks his eyes.

Radomir – or The Russian, as he is known in the Boardwalk districts – takes up most of the threshold. Chason cleans his bar and avoids looking to his left. It isn’t fear that stops his gaze from roaming, although The Russian is the most lethal of the men on the Vries’ payroll, but this: Chason knows a guard dog when he sees one. Just as he knows that a man’s nickname can be as telling and as intimidating as a scar or a burn across a face. Some men do not need the burden of adjectives. The description gets in the way, as though whatever could be said of the men in question would only diminish the true effect they had in person. Chason suspects that minimalism has always suited Radomir, the way war had suited him, so working for the Vries is just another war for The Russian. The landscape changes but not the battle. And if Chason has to keep guessing, he would say that Radomir’s nickname probably amuses him too … in the way certain soldiers are amused by a bloody kill and a hard rape.

The Russian picks at his nails with a Bowie knife, standing with his feet shoulder-width apart, and looks bored. He checks his watch once, seems unsatisfied by the time, and murmurs something in his Slavic tongue.

Chason doesn’t understand the language, but he knows intelligence when he hears it. Intelligence and anger. That’s the true horror, he thinks. Not The Russian’s sheer brawn, but the fact that his brains are just as developed as his muscles. One of Palmer’s busboys, a chocolate-skinned youth of sixteen with eyes like a doe and a name like a curse, once told Chason that hope slips away when The Russian arrives at your door. You expect the worst because here is a man whose body casts a giant’s shadow, who once crushed another man’s skull between his palms, whose smile is rabid.

Chason moves to restocking the whiskey and keeps his head down.

Outside on the wet city streets, beyond the threshold The Russian blocks, The Emerald’s Ford has parked at the curb and Palmer is already opening the passenger door for Sunniva. She slides into the curve of his offered arm the way water slides across stone. There’s a soft, foreign flush on her cheeks, and a dangerous hint of laughter on her tongue. She doesn’t even mind when Palmer keeps his hold on her waist, when she leans a little into his weight to balance out the natural hitch her prosthetic leg causes as her good foot searches for traction.

He whispers something into her ear, his nose pressed against her dark hair, and she hits him lightly on the arm. It’s too kind, too gentle, too full of unacknowledged intimacy.

An hour remains before sunset, but they don’t know that they’re already late.





Augusta hates waiting. She spent most of her life waiting – for the right moment, for ascension – and now impatience pains her like a cancer. “They should be here by now,” Augusta says, the irritated pitch in her voice contradicting the sharp, glasslike glare of her eyes.

“Wait,” Harrow tells her, smoothing a thumb across her knuckles with a sneer.

She pulls away, curling her hand more fully around her tumbler of bourbon in the process. She doesn’t drink, but she holds the glass, liking the chill against her palm.

Harrow lights a cigarette with a gold lighter while turning his head at the sound of approaching feet; he raises his eyebrows at his sister pointedly, smugly. Radomir has heard the noises too – he’s rolling forward onto the balls of his feet, sliding his knife back into its hiding place, cracking his knuckles with anticipation – and the air inside of The Emerald’s otherwise empty dining room simmers with smoke and feeling.

Sunniva notices the club’s silence before Palmer does. They still have an hour before even the early dinner guests typically arrive, but for all the windows do not reveal to the streets, The Emerald should be a hive of activity inside. Her mouth twists into a frown and trepidation crawls over her body as Palmer pushes the batwing doors of the dining room open.

He’s mid-grin, his oxfords bright against the checkered flooring, when he stops in his tracks. The Vries are in the middle of the room, as timeless as the clean linen tablecloths or the crystal glasses covering the tables around them. Augusta has the pose of a predator, much like her brother seated across from her, and although her hair is darker and her eyes are more hazel than blue, their relation is obvious by the sharp lines of their bones. The self-possessed way they sit with steel spines and feigned ease. The sensuous coldness of their thin mouths.

“Here be monsters,” Palmer murmurs, trying for tongue-in-cheek. His hand tightens around Sunniva’s waist.

Sunniva manages to seem sober, whatever warmth and unguarded happiness that had colored her face before sliding away into a mask of granite. Her shoulders stiffen. It’s the same body language she had adopted during the war, when blood was common, and danger threatened from each desolate corner of the world. As though remembering the fundamental loneliness of those times, she steps away from Palmer, not fully enough for the distance between their bodies to suggest tension to any casual observers, but enough for Palmer to notice and dislike the coldness that seeps into the space where the warmth of her had been. He feels it keenly, distractedly.

“You’re late,” Augusta informs them.

“I did not realize we were scheduled to meet.” Palmer runs his hand through his hair, collecting himself. He brandishes a smile the way other men brandish weapons.

“I trust Chason treated you well while you waited.” Sunniva does not look at the bartender, but Palmer sees him grin.

Neither of the Vries acknowledge her statement.

Radomir stalks forward. Sunniva thinks anyone unfamiliar with the battlefield would be surprised by his grace and lightness of foot, but she knows all too well how quick the unsuspected can be. Palmer is unperturbed; he holds his arms up without being told to, shoulders squared and body pliant as The Russian runs his calloused hands up and over his chest, arms, hips, into the pockets of both his suit jacket and trousers. Seemingly satisfied, Radomir turns his attention to Sunniva and conducts the same inspection. He moves back to the exit without speaking.

“Don’t worry, everything’s Jake.” Palmer assures the Vries, a gesture that even he knows is pointless. If things were not alright, he’s sure his neck would be snapped before he could grace the world and his current audience with another worthwhile quip.

Sunniva joins the siblings first, slipping into one of the open chairs across from them, her demeanor professional. Palmer follows but chooses to stand, one hand resting on the back of Sunniva’s chair.

“Is this about the Chicago deal?” Sunniva asks when neither Augusta nor Harrow speaks.

“What makes you think that?” Harrow drawls, his words thick with smoke from the cigarette between his thin lips.

“The last time we spoke, with the delivery – ”

“I didn’t speak to you.” Harrow leans forward and snubs his cigarette out into the crystal ashtray at the table.

Augusta raises her hand in an impatient gesture, her fingers long and glimmering with rings. She looks at Harrow briefly, a line of annoyance splitting her forehead, before she settles more comfortably back into her own chair. “Chicago is not our problem.”

“So, there is a problem then.” Palmer says.

“He’s very perceptive, isn’t he?” Augusta scoffs, glancing at Sunniva as though for confirmation. “Yes. There is a problem. We have a rat.”

“We think we have a rat,” Harrow echoes, his tone suggesting that he does not share his sister’s concern.

“Impossible.” Palmer’s confidence makes Augusta raise an eyebrow, the expression eerily similar to Harrow’s.

Beneath the table, Sunniva curls her hand into a fist, digging her nails into the fabric of her dress.





Roman is an oil spill, the lines of his body blending effortlessly, slickly, into the darkness around him. If it wasn’t for the burning cigarette between the fingers in his right hand, glowing bright in the shadows, Sunniva would not have seen him.

She remembers him from the war, and how he was the best suited for night time errands, for bringing death from a distance. He still possesses the same skills: wearing silence as a shroud, merging his body into his surroundings, turning his gaze to that of a hawk’s. Not for the first time, she thinks he’s wasted as a doorman, only now she feels doubt cloud her perception of him.

She takes his cigarette without asking, and he steps more to the left, making room for her to lean against the brick beside him.

“What did you do, those years after the war, before you came back?” Her question is too layered in suggestion. She regrets it immediately, but she knows their shared history is no protection for either of them anymore.

Roman arches an eyebrow. “Hello to you too, Pirate.”

“Wasn’t there a woman?”

“I lost count,” he says with a grin that splits his entire face, his teeth white against his lips.

Sunniva hears Palmer in his response and fights the urge to roll her eyes. “The French one.”

It’s too dark to make out his eyes, but for a moment she thinks she sees a flicker of emotion in his gaze. A crack in his otherwise hardened armor.

When he doesn’t answer her, she passes him his cigarette. He takes it easily enough.

“We have a problem, Roman.”

“When do we not?”

“This one involves vermin.”

“A rat?”

She makes a hum of acknowledgement and waits.

Roman has finished his cigarette by the time he decides to speak. “You do know this is all just another game, right? A way to pass the time before the big sleep. Even Palmer’s pretending, but he knows. Someone always loses. We were already lucky once. We won’t be lucky again.”

“Forgive me if I do not share in your nihilism. I still value my life.”

Roman laughs, short and cynical, pushing himself from the wall in a clean motion. “We died a long time ago, Sunshine.”

She catches him by the crook of his elbow; he stops, looking down at her from a half-step away. “Don’t call me that,” she says, her voice no longer suggestive, but not unkind.

He shrugs away from her fingers, pulling his arm free. When he leans closer to her, she does not back away. He tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, his fingers brushing the side of her jaw. When he smiles, she smiles back.

No hard feelings.

She won’t feel the same in the future.