Page 2 of Nothing More

A quiet, wet crunch as the skin gave. A faint pop, of a barrier breached.

He pushed, and pushed, and he didn’t hit bone. The man screamed against his gag, a garbled, animal sound of pain and distress. Toly knew he’d hit the heart when the man spasmed, and his head fell forward.

He stepped back and withdrew the knife, moving quickly and to the side to avoid the fat stripe of arterial spray that jetted across the floor. It was hardwood; it would clean.

Then he turned and carried the bloodied knife back to Andrei.

The Pakhan offered another of those terrible smiles, and the polishing cloth, which Toly took and applied to the steaming knife.

“Very good,” Andrei said. “You’ve done well, Anatoly.”

The fresh blood was hot through the cloth as he wiped it. “Yes, sir.”

~*~

London

14 Years Ago

Her makeup was trying to melt under the lights. A harried young woman wearing a toolbelt full of brushes and powders attended to her, blotting her forehead and cheeks, dusting a bit more blush along her cheekbones. Raven closed her eyes and held her breath as the girl leaned forward and blew the excess away with one forceful breath.

She was twenty-one, and had just landed her first solo advert photoshoot: a promotion for a new brand of perfume. La Passion. This particular campaign was aimed at the Eastern European market, with billboards set to be posted in all the former bloc countries, and Russia itself. She lay on her stomach on a chaise, a sheet barely preserving her modesty from the waist down, surrounded by coils of wire, a flood of hot, bright lights on stands, and a small army of assistants of all sorts. She glimpsed her mother, and her agent, Stella, just beyond the blocked-off, white-on-white landscape of the set, standing behind the photographer with their heads bent together, whispering.

The makeup girl straightened a lock of her hair, lay it over her shoulder, and stepped back, making room for a second girl, this one bearing a can of Coke beaded with condensation.

“Thank God,” Raven sighed, and reached for it. “I’m parched.”

The girl drew the can back with an apologetic face. “Er…no. It’s not to drink.”

Raven frowned. “What’s it for?”

“Don’t frown, please.” The makeup girl swooped back in with another brush, dabbing at the corners of her mouth once she’d smoothed the frown away.

“I’m sorry,” Coke girl said. “Mr. Humphries wants you to–”

“Let’s hurry it up, ladies!” the photographer – the esteemed, highly-sought-after Mr. Humphries – called, clapping his hands together loudly enough to send the sound echoing off the steel and concrete of the studio space like a gunshot. “Clock’s ticking.”

The makeup girl fled.

The Coke girl looked as though she wanted to, biting at her lip, leaning away from Raven, Coke held out in a desperate bid for her to take it so she could leave.

“What?” Raven asked, helplessly. “What does he want?”

The girl sucked in a deep breath, and then blurted, “Use it on your tits, he said. Make your nipples pointy.” She thrust the can into Raven’s slack grip, and bolted, face crimson.

Raven looked to Humphries, who’d climbed up onto his stool, perched like a vulture behind his several-thousand-dollar camera rig. “Go on, then,” he called to her. “A little” – he mimed pressing the can to his own nipples, one at a time – “to get the girls all nice and perky, yeah? We need to wrap this up, darling. Chop, chop.”

“A moment, please,” Mother said, and stepped up to whisper furiously in Humphries’ ear. In typical Mother fashion, she was not, in fact, whispering at all.

“Her chest isn’t going to be seen in the ad! What reason could you possibly have for–”

“That doesn’t matter. People will be able to tell.”

“How?!”

“It makes them fuller, when the buttons are popped. Viewers can…”

Raven looked down at the can slowly numbing her hand with cold, and not for the first time, she wondered if this business, this career, was perhaps not her greatest passion and dream. Was perhaps, instead, something from which she wanted run, very far and very fast.