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18

Author: Thekla Jackiv
last update Huling Na-update: 2025-05-16 05:45:58

Morning came late and unwanted, like an apology from a man who wasn’t sorry. I was still alive and still not traded for someone’s finger in a velvet box. The naive sun crawled in through my tall windows with the confidence of someone who’d never been shot at. I was still nursing my yesterday’s fear and that stale jasmine air, still dressed in yesterday’s silk robe and today’s good mood.

Marta knocked at my door. That’s how you know it’s her—just once, no hesitation, like the house belonged to her and the rest of us were just squatting. She didn’t wait for an answer. Just opened the door and busted in.

“You have surprise waiting for you,” she said, her voice flat as day-old soda.

“Surprise?” I blinked, pretending to orient toward her voice. “What kind of surprise? Electroshock or just the emotional version of electric chair?”

“Don’t be so acidy, madame. You will like it,” she said. “It is something gentle. The ballroom has been fitted for you.”

Ballroom. Nothing gentle ever happened
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  • The Vision She Hid   121

    Eventually things got quieter, as they usually do on such occasions. The yellowish smoke that lingered had the personality of a mad uncle—loud dressed, overstaying, and smelling like the wrong decade. It clung to the chandelier, which still swung lazily over the long oak table, but was considering early retirement. Blood was still drying on the wood, tacky and dark, the kind that remembered the noise it came with. Chairs sat still but crooked, a stack of old men in expensive suits wore the same crookedness in their backs, and the air hummed with that post-battle tinnitus that reminds you your nerves are still there.I’d washed my hands and that sickening smell wouldn’t go away, that’s for sure. I felt the blood ghosting my fingers, a memory my skin couldn’t get rid of. Big Elky stood near the head of the table, shoulders soft the way cats look soft—until you feel the claws. On the wall behind him, a map of territories and routes had slid askew. Someone had punched a hole clean throug

  • The Vision She Hid   120

    The chandelier swayed first. Not the polite shimmy it usually does when men argue too loud, but a full shudder, crystals clinking like mean gossipers trying to outrun the truth. At first I thought it was nerves in the rafters—then the rumble followed. The sound of V5 engines outside, low and hungry. The kind of engines that don’t do idle; they lurk.The long-awaited verdict never came. The gavel in puffy manicured hand with age spots froze halfway down. Then the windows shattered, a burst of light and noise came in so fast it felt like God had gotten drunk and emptied his ashtray on us. Automatic fire tore through the stained glass window—saints, angels, and devils all shredded into a rain of colored shards. The saints fell hardest and shattered in smallest pieces. They always do.The room detonated in chaos. Elders dove under the thick oak table, the same table where they’d been weighing human lives like pork bellies just some ten seconds ago. Now they all cowered like timid schoolbo

  • The Vision She Hid   119

    That council didn’t need doors. It needed moat with crocodiles. But the men who thought themselves architects had installed doors anyway, heavy oak beasts that looked like they’d eaten centuries of bad news accompanied by someone’s dropping dead. Those doors groaned as Elky’s men shoved them open and dragged in what passed for evidence: Andros Jennings, cuffed, bloodied, still smirking as if the cuffs were bracelets and the bruises just new shades in his make-up palette.He walked straight even while being pulled, the way some men think the world has a duty to respect them even in ruin. His lip split when one of the guards yanked him a notch too hard, but he still grinned wide, showing the blood like his calling card. But his cocky entrance didn’t fool anyone: Andros Jennings was kind of guy who would auction off a corpse if he thought the shoes would fetch a decent price.Behind him came Anatole, not dragged, but cuffed. He didn’t look like he cared, just walked like chains were mean

  • The Vision She Hid   118

    The meeting room didn’t expect us to make it in time. It produced a sigh of shock and disbelief when three of us busted in, Elky leading, and not in the best mood. Chandeliers drooped from the ceiling, dimmed just enough to make grumpy old men look handsome and dangerous. A long Georgian mahogany table ran the length of the room like a spine that had learned how to seat power. On the walls, Elky’s ancestors stared down at modern criminals: admirals and abbots, a duchess with a throat like a plaster column, two men who’d probably conquered something worth the effort and a third, 20th century guy who’d definitely embezzled something big. The room felt timid. The portraits had more vertebrae than most of the men in the chairs.We came in as three—Elky in front, me in his orbit, Anastasia a step off my shoulder with the calm of a woman who’s made peace with what she did. The elders looked up in the synchronized motion of vultures deciding a carcass had finally stopped pretending to be se

  • The Vision She Hid   117

    THe time for sentiments expired with the sound of sirens. It started as a rumor in the fog—thin, metallic, disturbing sound. Then they found their loud voice and got arrogant. The sound was accompanied with long red knives of light, sawing at the dark, Doppler whining off the wet concrete. The light strobes bled through the vines, turned the graffiti into moving wounds, and made the rust sweat.Elky didn’t look surprised. He looked prepared.“Positions,” he said into the radio, voice flat as an old invoice. “Two on the catwalk. One at the loading bay. Kill the lights upstairs—keep the bulb in the office; I want the decoy to breathe. If they breach, fall to stairwell B. No one dies or gets too loud.”Men answered in clicks and monosyllables, the tongue combat uses when deadline wears reinforced boots. Our men moved fast, flickering out of the gloom—the loyal few with the eyes of men who had outlived persistent trends. The old factory building took them in like an old cathedral remember

  • The Vision She Hid   116

    Nobody listened, and nobody moved. I made an effort. I decided against crying. Now they were telling me I had to listen what my mother had to say. That ruined office of hers had the acoustics of a confession booth, making it a perfect place for reciting family history and other felonies. The lonely bulb buzzed, heroic and underpaid. Outside, the old factory breathed in that slow, damp way old buildings do when they knowingly outlived their owners. Water ticked somewhere in the dark like a patient metronome at my ballet lesson. I felt the countdown flexing on the back of my neck — 03:26:19 — the kind of number that walks into a room and sits in your chair, wondering why you are not in a rush.Anastasia finished binding her wrist and set the journal on the desk like a judge puts down a gavel. Her face, under the swelling, had the calm of a woman who has burned bridges and kept the ashes in a Chinese ginger jar. Elky stood just beyond the circle of light, a shadow with pockets, eyes numb

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