She Begged Them Not to Call Me

Brin Holloway. Twenty-six years old. She had worked the bar at Vesper Row, my nightclub on West Randolph, for two years before she became something I did not have a clean category for. She used to sleep against my chest with the unconscious trust of someone who had decided, against all available evidence, that the man she was with was fundamentally sound. She had a way of arguing that made me feel like I was being asked to become better rather than simply being told I was worse. She cooked badly and knew it and didn't care, which I had found, to my own surprise, endearing.

Nine months ago, I had looked at her across the kitchen table of the apartment above the club — the rain against the windows, the whiskey between us, her eyes already knowing — and I had said the sentence I had rehearsed for three weeks because I believed I was protecting her from something worse. "You don't belong in my world."

She had said nothing. She had simply looked at me for a long moment with the expression of a woman committing something to memory, and then she had walked out, and I had let her, because I had told myself that was the correct decision for everyone involved.

The gurney was already past me. I had maybe three seconds before the doors at the far end of the corridor closed behind it.

The math was not complicated. Nine months. Full term. The apartment above Vesper Row and a window that faced west and the sound of rain and every night that led to that kitchen table. The only question was why my body had already processed the answer before my mind had caught up with it, because I was standing by the time I was consciously aware I had moved.

Royce, my most trusted man, materialized at my left shoulder. He did not startle easily. He startled now. "Boss," he said quietly, "that's Brin, isn't it? From the Row?"

I was looking at the doors that had closed behind the gurney.

"No one goes near her," I said. "No one asks questions. No one says her name in this building until I know what we're dealing with."