Next Saturday, I'll be out of town and unable to update, so sorry in advance! Regular updates will continue the following week.
Sunlight falls in blindingly bright stripes through the curtains and over Kovilka's bed as she finally rouses to waking at the sound of her phone ringing on the bedside table. She groans as she rolls over, unwilling to untangle herself from the sheets as she fumbles to answer, resting the phone next to her face on the bed. "Da?" she says groggily. When she doesn't get an answer, she stretches and sits up, holding her phone with her shoulder and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "Ko je to? I mean," she swears under her breath, trying to convert her muddled thoughts into Italian, "Sorry, who is this?"
"It's Ciro," she hears, and her eyes widen.
"Ciro? What time is it?" She throws off the covers and leaps out of bed, stumbling over her her purse that she wisely left in the middle of the floor on her way to the bathroom.
"Eleven-thirty," he says, sounding like he's trying not to laugh, "Did Sis sleep in? It's okay, Mamma and Papa will be here until twelve."
Exhaustion long-gone and replaced by panic, Kovilka hurriedly cleans herself up, gets dressed, pulls her bangs out of her face with a hairband, and tosses the garbage bag of bloodied clothes into the trash bin outside. Not a minute after noon, there's a knock at the door, and she opens it to find Ciro, Sara, and their mother on her doorstep. Lena Merlo is a petite woman that Kovilka looks down to talk to even when the other woman wears heels, and she suspects that Ciro will outgrow her by the time he becomes a teenager. She showers her children with affection but isn't opposed to grounding them if they step out of bounds, and Kovilka takes care to stay in her good graces.
"Signora Merlo, I am so sorry," she says quickly, but the woman cuts her off with a smile and a shake of her head.
"There's nothing to be sorry for," Lena says, "You're allowed to sleep in now and then, especially when you've had a hard day. I remember being that age."
Kovilka wants to ask her what she means, but she vaguely remembers Ciro approaching her late last night and asking if she and "Renato" had broken up; he doubtlessly decided they had and told his mother. She glances down at him and he looks away innocently. "I'm feeling better today," she says, looking back at Lena.
"I'm glad. Teo and I might be gone a little late tonight. Is that alright?"
"Absolutely," Kovilka says with a passive wave, "Enjoy yourselves!"
Lena nods, tells her children to be good, kisses their foreheads, and is gone with a wave. The door shuts in her wake, and Ciro and Sara rush past her to put their bags in her living room, claiming her furniture as their own for the rest of the night. Kovilka follows and finds them sitting patiently on her couch, looking at her almost expectantly.
"Why did you break up with Renato?" Ciro asks immediately.
Kovilka takes a deep breath, holds the air in, counts to ten, and exhales. "Ciro," she says calmly, "That isn't what happened."
"Then what did happen?"
"Break up?" Sara repeats, her eyes lighting up. "Sis has a boyfriend?"
"Had," Ciro corrects.
"Move over," Kovilka grumbles, giving Ciro a playful shove to make room for her on the couch between them. "I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea, so I'm gonna set the record straight. Renato and I did not break up."
"So Sis has a boyfriend!" Sara says triumphantly, sticking her tongue out at her brother. Kovilka opens her mouth to correct her that they were never together, but to her surprise, Ciro doesn't get mad or argue.
"That's good," he says simply, and it throws her off so badly that she completely loses her train of thought.
"That's good?" she repeats, "Why?"
"Because you'll still be happy."
"You know, Ciro, I don't need a boyfriend to be happy."
"No, but you'd be lonely otherwise, right?" he asks, "You don't have many friends. We're your friends, but we're not as old as you are, so we can't do all the things you can. So whether it's a boyfriend or a friend, I'm just glad Sis isn't lonely anymore."
Kovilka stares at Ciro for a minute before sighing and wrapping her arms around him. "You say the funniest things," she says, "But they're all true."
"I know," Ciro says proudly.
Kovilka's phone rings on the table and she reaches forward to answer, trying to maneuver around Sara who has attached herself to her torso in the hopes of getting a hug. "Hello?"
"I don't usually get stood up, even if it is just for a phone call."
Kovilka tenses, and Sara and Ciro both notice, eyes flying to her face to see what's wrong.
"Who is it?" Sara says, trying to whisper but her voice coming out loudly anyway.
Kovilka covers the receiver. "It's," she sighs, "It's Renato." The children grin at each other conspiratorially. "Could I have some privacy?" she asks, not really expecting any. Ciro nods and drags Sara off the couch and into the kitchen. Kovilka pretends she can't see them peeking around the corner into the living room.
"Ah, you're babysitting," Reborn says, amusement evident in his voice.
"You heard that?"
"Difficult not to."
"Sorry," Kovilka says quietly, "I forget to call. I had a long night, and Ciro's mother asked if I could watch the kids."
"Long night?" he asks, suddenly disinterested in Ciro.
Kovilka is surprised he hasn't heard about it yet from Bianchi, but nonetheless grateful. She isn't sure it's something she wants spread around. "Long story."
"I've got time."
"I really don't want to talk about it." She glances pointedly at Ciro, who ducks out of sight again, yanking Sara with him. "Not right now."
"Ah." Reborn seems to understand and lets it drop, for now. "I suppose you'll be tied up for the rest of the day?"
"Yeah." She smiles bitterly. "I'm sure you can find someone else to help you pass the time." Reborn is silent for a long time, and she wonders if that was a little harsh. "Sorry."
"I'm not offended." As much as she appreciates him telling the truth, his easy admittance still stings.
"This might've been a bad idea after all."
"You're backing out?" Reborn asks incredulously.
"No, I'm," Kovilka struggles to find a way to word it that doesn't sound cowardly, and comes up with nothing, "I don't know. I don't want to."
"Good. Then I'll call you tomorrow."
He hangs up, leaving no room for argument, and Kovilka sets the phone down, heart beating a little faster.
"Can we come back now?" Sara's loud whisper comes from across the room, and Kovilka laughs and waves them back over.
After dinner, Kovilka puts empty plates in the sink and makes sure Ciro and Sara brush their teeth. Ciro takes the guest bedroom and Kovilka gives Sara her own, content to remain in the living room until their parents come back. She pulls a Beethoven CD from the steadily growing pile of her favorites on her desk and turns the volume down, checking her e-mail. Soft footsteps pad down the hall to her, and she glances up to find Ciro in his pajamas, looking apprehensive.
"Sara, what's wrong?" she asks, turning in her chair to give the boy her full attention.
"Sorry," he says, "Sara won't go to sleep. She says she's nervous."
Kovilka smiles and stands up, leaving the music running. Sara probably isn't used to sleeping somewhere that isn't her own bed. "Does your mother usually tell her a bedtime story or something?" she asks as she walks with Ciro back towards her room.
"Yeah."
"I'll take care of it. Thank you for telling me, Ciro. You're a good brother."
Kovilka almost laughs at how proud he looks.
Sara is wide awake, sitting up straight in bed and clutching the stuffed bear she brought to her chest. "Sis said she'll tell you a bedtime story," Ciro tells her, and Sara looks up timidly at Kovilka.
"Thank you, Sis," she says.
Kovilka can't help but think of her own sister for just a moment, a time or two when Anka was nervous and couldn't sleep and they'd passed the time making shadow puppets on the wall to relax. "You're very welcome, Sara," she says gently, sitting on the bed beside her. "Just so you know, though, I'm not a very good storyteller."
Sara giggles and opens her mouth to say something, but the sound glass shattering somewhere in the house makes her fall silent. Footsteps, slow and cautious, follow shortly after.
"Ciro," Kovilka whispers urgently, calling him away from the door, "Come here. Sara, I need you to get out of bed." They both do as they're told, staring up at her with big, fearful eyes. Kovilka wants to smile at them reassuringly, but her mind is reeling. An intruder? A hitman? She wouldn't be nervous normally, but she can't let the children get hurt. The footsteps are slow, moving through the house, and Kovilka forces herself to act. Kneeling in front of the children, she says, "Listen to me. I'm going to shut the door, and I want you to lock it. I want you to hide underneath the bed, and you have to be very quiet, okay?" Sara is biting her lip and her eyes are filling with tears already. Ciro holds her hand. "Do you understand?" she asks firmly.
Ciro nods for both of them.
"I'll be back," she says, "Don't come out until I say it's okay, alright?"
He nods again. Kovilka wants to take a moment longer to give them a hug and promise them that she won't let anything bad happen, but there's no time. She sees Sara's wide, tear-filled eyes just before she swiftly shuts the door, and hears a click as Ciro locks it from the other side.
Kovilka tries to imagine she's on a job, an infiltration mission, and keeps her breathing shallow as she creeps down the hall. The footsteps have stopped and she hears someone rummaging in the living room, and presses her back against the wall. She peers around the same corner Ciro and Sara did earlier, finding someone dressed in black going through her desk, a gun in one hand. If he were simply taking things, like her computer or her phone lying on the table, then she'd think he was just a burglar, but he's looking for something specific, glancing out at the patio doors and checking behind the couch, and he's holding a gun at his hip.
Undoubtedly a hitman.
Kovilka wants to freeze in fear but she takes a long, shaky breath, and keeps herself centered, reminding herself of Ciro and Sara curled up under her bed. She's never been attacked in her home before, and her gun is safely locked away in her safe as a precaution whenever the children are over. She knows she doesn't have many chances; she's unarmed, and one mistake will get her killed. On the other hand, she can't wait around too long, because if he really did come for her, then he'll be checking the bedroom next.
Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony begins to play, and Kovilka's breath catches in her throat when he turns away from her and faces the hallway leading the bedrooms. She crosses the room in three steps, but halfway through the third, he hears her and whirls around. Kovilka seizes his wrist, forcing his aim away from her. Kovilka sees the window he broke through to get in behind him, glass littering the floor. The momentary distraction is all it takes for her to loosen her grip, and his other hand breaks free, delivering a strong punch to her stomach that knocks the wind out of her. In the struggle, he fires, and she screams.
Pain explodes in her shoulder and she wrenches away from him, throwing herself over the couch and hissing as she lands on her wound. She hears his footsteps, heavier now and no longer disguised by stealth, as he comes over to finish the job.
"Like this, now," Aunt Sofia had said, guiding Kovilka's hands to grip the knife with less fear, "Nothing to be afraid of, you see? It fits nicely in your hand."
Kovilka wasn't too much attention to the knife, though. Her eye were on Sofia, who had left her side to approach the heavy sack of soil propped up against the wall. There was nobody inside of it, Kovilka knew, but she still tensed when Aunt Sofia approached it with a knife of her own, knelt beside it and held it in front of her so Kovilka could see clearly.
"Now watch carefully," Sofia said, and she turned the knife around in her hand before lowering it to the front of the bag of soil. "I'm afraid I don't have a better demonstrative partner this time, but some other time, I will show you. It's easy, so easy. You start on one side," with just the slightest bit of pressure, Sofia dug a pinprick into the bag, "And you pull."
With one fluid motion, she cut across the sack, and soil spilled onto the floor. Kovilka flinched. "You must practice the motion," Sofia said, "Next time, I'll make sure we have a more realistic example. But you can only watch then, too." She smiled as if it was a joke. "If I let you do anything more, your mother would kill me!"
"Why do I have to watch if I'm not supposed to do it?" Kovilka had asked.
Sofia's smile faltered. She set her knife down on the table and her hands fell on Kovilka's shoulders. "You're not supposed to do it now," Sofia said, "But someday…."
Kovilka is possessed by the memory, and she wills herself to move through the pain. She shoves against the couch with all of her weight, sending it toppling. The assassin is caught off guard for a moment, and he isn't fast enough to avoid being crushed under the couch, legs caught, and Kovilka vaults over the couch and to the window, bending to take the largest shard of glass she can find and coming back to him before he can pull himself free.
The gun goes off again, and Kovilka shrieks at the pain that sears through her left hip, collapsing to the living room floor. She uses one hand to divert his aim and the other falls to his throat, pressing the jagged end of her makeshift weapon into the skin.
"Someday, you'll need to protect someone, and you will be glad I showed you."
Kovilka's entire body shakes as she breathes, dropping the bloodied glass into the slowly-growing red stain on her carpet. The hitman's grip goes lax at last and she takes his gun out of his hands. Struggling to her feet and falling onto one knee, she gradually pushes the couch back into an upright position, noticing a phone sticking out of the assassin's pocket, blinking to indicate a new message.
Kovilka collapses trying to check it, falling onto her knees, breathing ragged. He has one new message from a contact saved under the name Monti.
"Did you finish the job?" it says.
Kovilka swears and drops his phone on the ground, groaning as she comes down from her fear-filled adrenaline high and the pain kicks in. Her t-shirt and pants are thoroughly soaked through and stained with blood. She's idly wondering how she'll explain this when she hears someone take a shuddering breath and looks up in fear, expecting backup.
Ciro and Sara are standing in the shadows of the kitchen, the elder sibling with the phone pressed to his ear while Sara cowers with her hands over her ears with her eyes wrenched shut.
"Ciro," Kovilka chokes, "You...I told you...not..."
He saw her kill him. She can tell by the way he's looking at her, eyes full of fear, standing between her and his sister.
"I told you not to come out," she says, voice wavering.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, afraid of her.
Kovilka stares at the children, keeping themselves a room apart, huddled together for comfort, and she knows it's over. Her quiet life in the neighborhood, her friendship with her neighbors, her sisterly relationship with them…
It's all over.
The next few hours all blur together. Kovilka hears the sirens but they don't really register in her mind. She stays where she is, crouching and bleeding out on the carpet, until she feels hands on her, pulling her onto a gurney and wheeling her out into the cool, night air. She sees the paramedics crouching and talking to Ciro and Sara, and she sees Ciro look back at her through the mass of people between them, looking betrayed. Somebody tries to talk to her, the faceless medics swarming around her asking for her name or her age, anything to keep her lucid, but she doesn't answer. She doesn't think she can talk.
She blinks and she's lying in a hospital bed. There's an IV in her arm and bandages around her shoulder and hip, and it hurts to move. She expects to be alone, but she finds Reborn sitting at her bedside. She thinks she must be hallucinating.
"Where…where are the kids?" she mumbles, "Are they okay?"
"They're fine," he tells her, "They're with one of your neighbors." He pauses. "Bianchi told me about your mess with Monti." Kovilka wants to be angry, but she can't muster the strength to be. She supposes she would have had to tell him eventually. "You should've killed him."
"I know," she says tiredly, "Bianchi told me that, too."
"You should've listened to her. I guess it could've been worse, though. You could probably play this off as a random crime."
"They saw me kill him."
Reborn pauses. "They saw you what?"
"I killed him," Kovilka whispers, still in disbelief, "I slit his throat."
"It was because of the kids, wasn't it?" Reborn asks, "You weren't even thinking about your own safety."
She doesn't answer.
Reborn's hand comes to rest on top of hers. "Welcome to the life," he says softly, "It gets easier."
"I don't believe you."
"You don't have to. But I wouldn't think about going back to your home unless it's to pack your belongings and move. I'm not so sure you're the kind of person Ciro's mother would want around her children."
Kovilka takes a shuddering breath and nods. "I have to tell them," she says hoarsely, "Everything. I want them to know."
Reborn looks like he doesn't agree, but he doesn't voice it. He lets go of her hand. "Call me when you're discharged," he says as he stands up, "I'll come get you."
"Wait," Kovilka calls, embarrassed by how desperate she sounds. Reborn pauses in the doorway, turning back to look at her. She feels like a child. "I...I just…."
I don't want to be alone right now.
Reborn raises a brow impatiently.
"Are, uh...are you busy?"
Slowly, his lips curl into a smirk, and he takes a step back into the room. "So it took getting shot twice to decide you actually can tolerate my presence?"
Kovilka rolls her eyes but finds herself relaxing when he comes back and sits beside her again. "As soon as I'm out," she promises, "I want to talk to my neighbors. Then we're on for coffee."
"Coffee?" Reborn repeats, "I think we're past the casual acquaintance stage. How about dinner?"
"Sure."
It's easier to distract herself with Reborn there, and she indulges in flirting a bit, if only because it lets her forget about how much her shoulder is throbbing and what Ciro and Sara must think of her now and what her neighbors must be thinking about.
She has to face them at some point, something she thinks about with overwhelming dread, but she knows it's the right thing to do.
At least with Reborn promising dinner, she has something to look forward to her afterwards.