The massage table creaks as she shifts her weight, moving to a particularly tender spot where Dragan’s bullet tore through muscle. Rain starts to patter against the glass, marking time with each stab of pain.
The room reeks of her homemade liniment, all camphor stinging my nostrils. “Christ, malchik. You’re even more of a mess than I thought you were.”
Her fingers find the bullet wound and test it. Puckered flesh remembers how it felt—steel chewing through meat, concrete rising up to kiss my skull. f**k, that alley was so cold.
I grind my molars as her palm presses down, checking the give.
“Still favors the left,” she tsks. “Gonna walk crooked if you don’t—”
“Ebat’, you always were a s**t patient.” But her hands gentles on the next pass. We both stare at the window where rain blurs t
