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6

Author: Thekla Jackiv
last update Last Updated: 2025-04-23 08:17:44

The ceiling above me was the color of expensive cream from Harrods food hall. It was probably late afternoon, and I just woke up. The daylight slid through the tall windows in lazy ribbons, too golden, too soft for the kind of place where a girl might wake up owned.

I lay still for a minute, eyes half-shut. It took me some time to remember where I was. There was silk rustle of the drapes, the faint tick of a wall clock that probably cost more than my freedom, and the distant echo of footsteps—slow, deliberate. Not the kind of steps that hurry. Not the kind that need to be discreet.

I ducked under the blanket. The sheets smelled like lavender and wealth. The bed was endlessly soft, obviously designed to cradle a princess. Pity I felt more like a loot at the bottom of a pirate ship.

I gave myself a three-second count before sitting up. One for rage. Two for heartbreak. Three for playing nice.

The door opened soft as a sigh. I didn’t need my eyes to know who it was. The scent gav
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  • 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

  • The Vision She Hid   115

    The ruin around us breathed mildew and salty tears, but when I closed my eyes it smelled like bergamot and laundry starch. Memory is a lousy film noir; it keeps adding bay windows to rooms you only used once. I leaned against the well-lived desk. My mother just told me I was just a medical experiment with nice legs, and the desk’s wood grain turned into the kitchen table from another country, another decade. I remembered sun playing on glass. Lace curtains trying to teach the breeze how to behave. My mother was called Anastasia then. It wasn’t a codename yet, nor a cautionary tale. She was brewing Jasmine tea in our kitchen like it could fix all troubles in my little world.She used to cool the cup with two spoons of honey. “Sip, little dumpling,” she’d murmur, and my name in her mouth made me feel invincible. The tea was honey-sweet, with a bitterness that only arrived after the second spoon. I thought that was what love tasted like—warm up front, bitter sweet in the afterthought. Ye

  • The Vision She Hid   114

    That tiny office had once been important. You could tell by the way the rot refused to take it all in starting at the door. Still, grey mold curled along the edges of the plain green wallpaper in patterns that looked like failed maps. A steel filing cabinet leaned sideways, drawers open, as if it had been mugged and no one had called the cops. Glass crunched under our boots—the remnants of the unlucky windows that had lost their argument with bricks.My mother sat at her old desk like she owned the lease on suffering. Rope burns painted her wrists raw, but she worked at them with the calm precision of a woman cataloging museum new finds that were nothing to do with her own flesh. A strip of gauze from a Elky’s med kit lay on her lap. I made a few unsure steps, offering help. She shook her head, stopping me. She wound the gauze around her arm with neat turns, each tighter than the last. Her face was battered, the right eye swollen, but her gaze had the kind of focus that made you feel

  • The Vision She Hid   113

    The old factory rose out of the fog like it aspired to be a cathedral but settled for a morgue. It had nasty concrete ribs, vines for veins, and empty windows black as missing teeth. Sixty years of weather had gnawed at its bones, but the place still hummed with the kind of silence you only hear in graveyards. Nature had done her best to erase the past, but sins age slower than ivy.We parked short of the gate. Elky cut the lights and let the SUV die with the kind of finality that make you regret not writing a will. He slipped the pistol into his hand, checked the chamber with the same care other men check wedding rings, and nodded. That was his version of a love letter.I followed him, bandage tight under my coat, gun reassuringly cold in my palm. The fog licked the crumbled edges of the building, swallowing the colorful graffiti in pale tongues. Someone had painted a halo on the south wall, years ago, but rust had turned it into a noose.“Just be quiet,” Elky whispered. As if I was

  • The Vision She Hid   112

    The road looked like it had been built by a drunk mason who’d lost a bet with gravity. Fog slid across it in white sheets, not drifting, not floating—crawling like a house thief. The kind of fog that looked like it had a trade union and worked in shifts. Cypress trees leaned in close, their branches scratching at the SUV’s roof like creditors collecting their dues. The headlights dug two pale trenches into the murk, but the dark swallowed most of the effort anyway.Elky drove like a man who had already shaken hands with death and just wanted to beat it up to the next checkpoint. His hands on the wheel were steady and firm. He wasn’t reckless; just precise. If he’d been a surgeon, I wouldn’t have signed the consent form in no time.I sat next to him with my bandaged shoulder humming like a bad wiring. Every bump in the road sent a shock through my damaged body, a reminder that I wasn’t here by choice. I could’ve been anywhere else—on stage, in a dressing room, hell, even in a morgue. B

  • The Vision She Hid   111

    We went back to do the thinking. We couldn’t make a mistake, and we couldn’t spend too much time on not making it. Elky’s study was the kind of place that made timid people feel confident. And confidence we needed in abundance. Maps curled on the walls like they’d lost the nerve to lie flat. Phones squatted on the table like too suspicious witnesses. Old ledgers lay open where they’d been abandoned mid-murder. The hearth had gone cold, though cigar smoke still loitered above the mantel, a ghost too fond of company to leave.The young capos moved around it like men in a burning theater, eyes wide, tongues sharp, each pretending his hands weren’t shaking. They weren’t the kind of soldiers you polish for parades. They were the kind you keep because when the lights go out, they don’t forget where they left their knives.Elky stood at the center of the room, hands braced on the table, dripping rain onto a ledger dated 1982. The watch he’d stripped from Andros sat beside his knuckles, ticki

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