All night Boris drank and smoked in the living room, turning the apartment into a foul, noisy mess. He kept the TV blaring, making sure Annie couldn’t even drift into a little sleep. Under her blanket, she flinched at every shout and every crash.
In the morning he made her fix breakfast for him, even though she could barely reach the stove and didn’t know how to work it safely. He laughed at her clumsiness, stuck out a foot to trip her, and shoved her when she passed too close. There wasn’t a trace of decency in him.
When the phone rang, Boris grabbed it fast, hoping for news that Ellen had died. Instead, it was a lawyer who handled military insurance and benefits for families. Boris listened closely, and his face shifted into a look of sharp concentration.
“So without an official death certificate, there’s no payout?” he asked, tapping his fingers on the table. The answer clearly annoyed him, but he quickly started thinking of other ways around the problem. He already knew the kind of crooked people who might help speed things up.
He didn’t notice Annie slipping quietly toward the front door, hoping to run to the neighbor downstairs, Mrs. Carter. But Boris moved fast and caught her just before she reached it. He shoved her back into the hallway, and she hit her elbow hard against the doorframe.
“You’re not going anywhere until I get what’s owed to me,” he hissed in her ear. He locked the front door and shoved the keys into the pocket of his dirty gym shorts. Annie was trapped in her own home with a man who hated her for existing.
Boris sat down at Mike’s computer and began searching for state-run residential facilities and troubled-youth placements in remote parts of the country. He wanted the one witness to his behavior gone as quickly and as permanently as possible. One page after another opened on the screen.
Then a new email appeared in Mike’s inbox. The sender was an unfamiliar volunteer center attached to a field hospital overseas. The subject line was one word, typed in all caps—a word that could wreck Boris’s plans…
