Novels by Z. Locke

The apartment was quiet in a way it had never been before.I was up before the sun. I lay in bed for a while first, staring at the ceiling, waiting for something to arrive that didn’t—just the hollow numbness — wide and flat and somehow worse than crying. I got up because lying there felt like something I couldn’t afford.The kitchen was cold. I turned the kettle on and made breakfast. My hands moved automatically — eggs, toast, the cracked wooden spoon Sadie refused to replace. Enough for four people before I caught myself. I stood very still for a moment with the spoon in my hand. Then I put one plate back in the cupboard and kept going.Sadie came out of Mamma’s room at half past seven.She appeared in the doorway still in yesterday’s clothes, her hair undone, her eyes carrying the specific swollen weight of someone who had cried through the night and run out of tears somewhere around four in the morning. She looked at me. I looked back. We both said nothing to each other. She sat

Sam’s door was still locked when I checked.I stood behind and listened for movement and heard nothing. I knocked twice, nothing.I went to the kitchen and made eggs and toast and left the plate outside his door with a note folded against it.*Take care of yourself today. I love you.*I stood there a moment longer than necessary. Then I picked up my bag and left.I took a cab straight to the hospital. At the entrance I found myself lost in thought.I couldn’t go in. I was scared to face reality. I left Sadie a text, turned back, and headed for work. It was very unlike me.The office was loud with the particular energy of a floor that had a meeting to prepare for. Andrea was already at her desk when I arrived, highlighter in hand, a stack of quarterly reports beside her coffee.She looked at me once. Set the highlighter down.“What happened?”I shook my head and sat down and opened my laptop.She didn’t push. She turned back to her screen and said nothing and that, the specific kindn

The email arrived at eight fifty-three.Andrea read it first. She set her coffee down and said nothing. I read it twice.Cassius Moretti. New Head of Strategic Operations and Research and Finance oversight, effective immediately.“Well, I didn't see that coming,” Andrea said.“Well,” I said.We went back to our screens.Cassius arrived an hour later.He stood at the front of the floor and the room went quiet without being asked.“I’ll keep this brief.” His voice was low and even, the kind that didn’t need volume because it had never needed it. “Nothing about how this department operates changes. You’ll continue reporting through your existing channels. The difference is that those channels now run through me.” He paused. “I don’t manage by committee. If something is wrong I expect to know before it becomes a problem. If you’re uncertain about something, ask. I’d rather answer a question than fix a mistake.”His eyes moved across the room once and found mine for a second that didn’t qu

The letter was still in my bag.I’d moved it twice — once from my jacket pocket to my work bag, once from my work bag to the bottom drawer of my desk at home where I kept things I wasn’t ready to look at. It sat there now while I got dressed in the dark, while Sam argued with Sadie about whose turn it was to do the dishes. I knew the number. I just wasn’t ready to truly face it. Andrea was already at her desk when I arrived, coffee in hand, reading something on her screen with the focused expression of someone who had already been productive for an hour.“Second day,” she said without looking up. “Harder than the first.”“Why?”“First day you’re too nervous to notice anything. Second day you actually see where you are.”She wasn’t wrong.We went to the coffee place at ten-fifteen — two blocks east, exactly as Andrea advertised. Small, warm, the kind of place that had been there long enough to stop trying to impress anyone. Andrea ordered without looking at the menu. I followed her l

The apartment smelled like Sadie had been cooking since noon.Pasta and chicken, my favourite dish. I could tell she was busy all afternoon. Mamma was on the couch when I walked in. Sitting upright in the way that told me it had cost her something. She had her good headscarf on — the deep burgundy one and her eyes were bright. I felt the particular relief of it move through me quietly.Sam looked up from the floor where he’d spread his homework across the carpet. “You’re late.”“First day Sammy, cut me some slack.”“You’re late.” He repeated, laughing this time. I stepped over his textbooks and kissed my mother’s forehead. She smelled like the hospital and her perfume underneath it, that particular combination I’d stopped noticing until I noticed it again.I sat next to her and leaned into her shoulder the way I had when I was seven. She still felt the same. That was the part that got me, that she could feel the same and be so different underneath it.“Sit,” she said, patting the cu

York City — December 2025“Marcus—”“Stay down.” The warmth left his voice. He reached for his phone without looking my way, not once. I understood the way you understand things when it’s already too late. Marcus had known this was possible. He just hadn’t believed they’d be bold enough. Not in the open. Not against a Castello.The first shot took out the rear window.I screamed. Glass rained across my shoulders and I dropped low as the car swerved violently. Marcus shouted into his phone in rapid Italian, his free hand pressing my head further down. More shots. The car lurched. The driver made a sound I would never forget — not a scream. Just a soft, surprised exhale, like someone interrupted mid-thought.The car made a swift turn and ran straight into a fire hydrant. The impact threw me forward hard enough that my vision whitened at the edges. The driver’s head was against the wheel. He wasn’t moving.Silence for exactly one second.Then the doors opened.Men in dark clothing moved