"But," Madeline continues, "I think the truth is that you're sabotaging yourself. That guy with the red hair during breakfast today is proof of that."

"What are you talking about?" I ask, trying hard not to blush.

"You know exactly what," she says, laughing. "I saw the way he was looking at you and how he kept trying to get you to sit down and talk to him. He was hot! We both know that."

"He was ... attractive, yes."

"Why didn't you go for it then? Why didn't you sit down and talk to him?"

I sigh and turn around, leaning against the counter with one hip. "Because I'm on the clock and he had a tan line where his wedding ring used to be. He probably just got out of a marriage, and I don't want to deal with all that baggage."

Madeline clicks her teeth and shakes her head at me. "This is what I'm talking about. You keep finding reasons not to go for men. You're sabotaging yourself so you never get close to them."

"My god, it's like Dr. Phil is in the diner with me," I groan. I toss the rag behind me into a bucket full of other dirty napkins and wipes. "Maybe I just don't feel like dating right now. Maybe with everything going on with Nana and my writing and this job, dating just isn't high on my priority list."

Madeline shrugs. "Maybe. But I know you. I've seen you fawn over guys one minute and then find something wrong with them and turn your back the next. All I'm saying is, it couldn't hurt to give a guy a chance before you turn him away. I think you could meet someone really special."

Despite all of her nagging, I know Madeline wants to be helpful and this is her way of showing it. Other people might grow annoyed with her incessant nudging and prodding whenever an attractive man walks into Rudy's but it comes from a good place, so I don't let it bother me too much.

"Anyway," she says, glancing around at the nearly empty diner. "We should probably get started on cleaning up after the breakfast crew. Lunch will be here soon."

"Sounds like a plan," I say.

***

When I close the front door behind me, the first thing I hear is a gasp from the living room.

Something's wrong with Nana.

My heart rate spikes. I drop my purse clattering to the ground and spring around the corner as dark thoughts race through my head. Maybe she fell, or had a stroke, or someone broke in and ...

Nope. I race in the room to find Nana with her eyes glued to the television. One of her soap operas is playing, and it looks like someone just got shot by a masked gunman.

I let out a heavy sigh.

My body begins to unwind, and I scold myself for being so paranoid. I can't live every day anticipating the worst, but it's another one of my tough habits to break. After everything that I've lost, seeing Nana join that list might just be too much for me.

"Hi, sweetheart," Nana says without looking away from the television.

"Hi, Nana." I pull off my jacket and hang it up in the hallway, taking a seat on the big purple sofa next to her. It may be hideous, but the couch is one of the softest things I've ever sat on in my life, and though it doesn't go with anything in the room, I think that's how Nana likes it. Nothing in her home makes sense.

She has massive paintings on the wall that span various artistic styles, from modern images of puppies to pop art replicas of celebrities and surrealist landmarks across the globe. Her rugs range from faux fur to homemade crocheted ones, and all the furniture in the house was picked up from yard sales or gifted to her after friends passed away.

To say that Nana's house is a collaborative group effort would be an understatement. That's what I love about it. None of it makes any sense, but when it's all together, that kind of chaos is harmonious.

We sit in silence for a moment while the show's climax plays out on the screen before us. When it goes to commercial break, she turns to me, pats my hand, and smiles.

"How was work?" she asks.

"It was okay. Relatively slow, but we got a lot of regulars in."

"Did you see that fire on the news?" Her voice is soft.

I swallow hard and look up at her. I've never expressed the bit of PTSD I feel whenever I see things like that on the news, but Nana knows. Sometimes I wonder if she's been a mind reader this whole time. Rather than saying anything, I just give her a slow nod.

"Are you okay?"

The way she says it almost brings tears to my eyes. Nana has this distinct ability to be stern and strong and confident when she needs, but also uncomfortably tender and caring. It always throws me for a loop when she switches it up and cuts right to the point.

"Yeah," I say quietly. I pick at the tattered edge of one of her throw pillows, keeping my focus on anything but the soft brown eyes staring at me. "I don't think it'll ever be easy."

"It won't," she confirms. "But you'll learn how to cope better. You'll learn how to take it all in, feel it, but not let it overtake you and your thoughts."

That all sounds nice and dandy, but I don't know if I'll ever be strong enough to somehow do what she does. I can't imagine never feeling a twisting knife in my gut anytime I think about what happened to Mom and Dad. Not only is the wound still open from the fact that I lost them, but it's made even worse, salt sprinkled on top, because Abram Konstantin will never be punished for what he did.

Years ago, I sat down and tried to figure out everything I could about him. I wanted to know the man responsible for the death of my parents. I wanted to know who he was and why he was able to skate through life without any kind of repercussions for his actions. More frustrating than anything else was that he was essentially a ghost.

The only articles I could find about him in English were about his real estate dealings and all the businesses he ran in the city. His entire online identity was a sterilized wasteland of uninteresting articles and pictures posing with powerful people. Though my findings were limited, I took note of all the people he was close with.

Millionaires and billionaires, powerful people in town. He associated with the top of the top, and suddenly it started making sense. He didn't get away with negligence because the police truly found him innocent. He used a more precious capital, one that wasn't palpable but still carried more weight than cash. He had connections. He had people that could help him sweep the ash of my singed childhood under the rug, away from the public eye.

There's no way in hell I'll let this go. But for Nana's sake, I give her a small smile and a nod. "I'll try," I say. My answer seems to satisfy her because I watch as she leans back in her seat more comfortably.

"Are you doing okay?" I rise from the couch and take a step toward her, grabbing one of her pillows and fluffing it up. Recently, Nana had a health scare, and I've basically become like her mother, always doting on her and trying to make her as comfortable as I can.

"I'm fine, darling," she says. She pats my hand again reassuringly, and just like I lied to her about trying to let the fire go, I can see that she's filtering her words and holding back what she really wants to say. I can't blame her. Strokes aren't anything to speak lightly of, no matter how minor.

"I just want you to be okay. Even if it means taking more shifts at Rudy's so that I can afford your medicine. Whatever it takes, Nana," I say. There's nothing that I wouldn't do for her, and I want her to know that without a shadow of a doubt.

"Lucy," she says, almost sternly. I stop flitting around and look down into those deep blue eyes. "I'm the grown-up here. I'm taking care of you, baby. You shouldn't be worried about me. What you should be worried about is having fun and meeting a nice man."

It takes all my strength to hold back a groan. Two times in one day is a little too much for me. "Nana, I don't need a man."

"Nobody needs a man, Lucy. But they're fun to have around. And I want you to experience that. I want you to settle down with someone nice. At least try."

"Okay." There's no point in arguing with her about this, and I'm afraid that if I do, she'll get worked up and be sick again. "I'll make you a deal. As long as you take the next few days off, I'll go looking for a husband and we'll make some grandbabies for you. How does that sound?"

Her chuckle is sugar sweet, and I find myself growing warm from just her presence. Any time I start to feel anxious, I turn to her for relief. "That's my girl."

The commercials end, and just like that, her attention is now laser-focused on the twisty, complex storyline playing out on the screen. I've lost her to her stories, but that's okay. I have stories of my own to write.

I give Nana a heads-up that I've put lunch in the oven for her, then grab my laptop bag and head downstairs. There's a tiny little coffee shop a few blocks away, and with my headphones blaring my favorite song, it takes almost no time to make the trip. I step through the doors and give a small nod to the barista I see every afternoon.

While I get my laptop set up and go searching for the location that I saved my manuscript, I can't help but feel like such a stereotype. Nana getting sick was the biggest reason I decided to come back to New York, but another reason is the fact that here, my opportunities of having my work discovered are so much higher.

New York is full of possibilities for unpublished authors, and I know that deep in my heart, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Storytelling was always my passion growing up, and when I got to college, I took my first creative writing class. There, I had the idea that I'm currently working on.

It's about a woman losing her child to a notorious murderer in town, and after years of looking, she finds the first clue that could lead her to find out what truly happened that night at the deadly lake behind her home. It's marketable, that much I know, but the hard part for me is finding the time to finish it.

Between working at Rudy's and taking care of Nana, I rarely have time to sit down and just be with my characters. At work, my mind wanders back to thoughts of scenes in my book, and with Nana, I think about what my protagonist would be doing if someone was depending on her the way Nana depends on me.

Sitting there with my computer open and my notes spread out on the table, though, I find inspiration and let it take me in whatever direction it needs me to go in. As much as I love organization, I don't plan my books. I see the story in my head and the way I get there, but the fun part is figuring out the smaller scenes and all the ways to make those interesting so that no scene feels like it could be removed from the rest of the story.

Before I know it, I've typed almost three thousand words-major progress from where I started. My heroine, Malorie, has just been run off the road by the killer's equally unstable cousin, and her head is bleeding. As much as I want to sit and finish the scene, I decide to leave it on a cliffhanger. There will be plenty of time for me to revisit this world later on.

On the way out, I order a couple cookies and begin my trek home, my thoughts floating like zero gravity. How do I get my protagonist out of this situation? Is she too far gone now? And if she is, how can I give her the strength to fight her way out?

I'd like to be like her. Determined. Persistent. An all-around bad ass. But nothing like that ever happens in my life. Nothing this exciting, or dangerous, or reckless. Maybe that's why I'm writing. Nana and Madeline would say that I could have all that with a man. I shake my head and smile to myself.

Maybe they're right. Maybe I just need to find the right man.

Chapter Two

Roman

Each of us is born with a gift. A special talent. Some people act, some people dance, some people sing a fucking jingle.

Me, on the other hand ... I kill.

And tonight is another chance to show the world my gift.

Waiting is the worst part of this job. Memories are the only thing that help pass the time. Leaning against the exterior wall of this nightclub, the memory of my first kill comes back to me. Like most of my memories, it ends with blood.

It was late August, when the weather was finally starting to get colder and the city folk began trading T-shirts for flannels and jackets. My father took my brothers and me hunting for the first time. We'd spent a good few months learning how to shoot both guns and arrows, and he wanted to see how well we'd do after our lessons.

The crunch of leaves under my boots was so vivid that I can feel the texture of them to this day. The wind whipped our faces as we hiked from our truck through the hills until finally, we stumbled into a bit of clearing. At first, there wasn't much to see. A squirrel clung to a large oak tree. A collection of rocks growing moss on the sides. My father asked us if we saw anything. We said no.

"Then look harder."

That's when I saw the tiny brown rabbit pressed against the trunk of a tree, quietly nibbling food. My father gave me a look. As the oldest, I knew what it meant. I'd seen it plenty of times before. Narrowed eyes, lips pulled into a thin, straight line. I had to set the example.

Quietly, I pulled an arrow from my quiver and nocked it, pulling back the bowstring. I steadied myself and set my jaw, holding the position until I could feel the right moment to strike. The air in my chest stopped and I felt the world begin to disappear, every external distraction ceasing to exist. Then I let go.

The arrow sliced through the air in silence. Before my brothers Gedeon and Ivan could blink, the rabbit was dead, pinned to the tree.

I let out a breath and glanced at my father. The only indication that I'd done a good job was the short nod of his head, the most subtle of compliments. It was enough to satisfy me-for a moment. One rabbit alone wasn't enough, however. I wanted more. I wanted bigger, more dangerous.

We worked our way up from there. My brothers didn't have a knack for killing, nor did they like it the way I did. Raccoons. Deer. Elk. Even a bear once, with a perfect shot through its eye. My father seemed pleased with my skill. For years, we honed it, improving how quietly I moved, how long I waited before pulling the trigger, savoring the exhilarating feeling of a perfect strike.