top dollar to get Requiem profiled. Dropped out of med school, used all my savings.” The words were a whisper, like a long-held secret, and Mi Na stared at her hands as she mumbled them. “I had to find out how to get to you, how to get you vulnerable. To understand who you are. What mattered to you. To work out what you need. What you desire. The profiler interviewed some of the women Requiem…toyed with.
“The report I got back said, over and over, you only want power. Power of the hunt. Power over rivals and those who challenge you. That’s who you are. But you…you’re…not her. I don’t understand why you said no. What I did wrong. You should have said yes. He said you’d say yes.”
The plaintive, confused words echoed in Natalya’s head. She sighed and rose.
“Go home, Mi Na,” she said, injecting menace into her tone. “Challenge me or anyone in my life again and I will be ruthless. We both know that I know where your family lives. I know your father personally. I know which hospital he’s in.”
Mi Na’s brown eyes widened in shock.
Natalya had never let go of her informants’ network for this reason. You never knew which tidbit could pay off. For instance, she had been aware that a profiler had been looking into Requiem about six months ago. His subsequent death had been convenient but, for once, unrelated to her. Requiem’s were not the only toes the man had stepped on.
“Do not test me,” she continued. “You would regret it for the rest of your life. Tell me that you understand that, at least?”
Mi Na swallowed and nodded.
Natalya pursed her lips. She was getting soft. Mi Na’s head was bowed again, tears sliding down her cheeks, mingling with the blood from her injured nose, spattering on the floor in an ugly, sopping red mess.
Glancing around at the destruction in the room, and the human carnage on the floor, Natalya shook her head once, and slipped out the door.
Outside, she paused, wondering which way the linen closet was, and how to liberate an unconscious masseuse without anyone knowing…especially the masseuse herself.
She exhaled in annoyance, flexing her shoulders. On top of everything, now she really needed a massage.
Part Two: Bare
Natalya
“Hey, you’re early!” Alison’s voice echoed down the hall as Natalya arrived home at their two-bedroom penthouse apartment. “How come?”
“My masseuse became unwell,” Natalya called back. She hung her keys on a hook behind the door and leaned down to give their slumbering, ancient red heeler, Charlotte, a scratch behind her greying ears. “We cut the session short. What’s that interesting smell?”
“Come and find out.”
Natalya crossed the parquetry floors, glancing at the white walls and precisely placed modern art, musical trinkets, and framed photos of Alison’s family.
Pride of place in the hall was a photo of Alison, her sister, Susan, and niece, Hailey, laughing on the couch in their lounge room. It had felt so strange when they’d come to visit. At the time, Natalya had still been adjusting to having more than one voice in her life. And then suddenly there had been wall-to-wall Ryans. Adding to the surrealness, neither of them called Alison by the name she knew her. It was a dead name from a past that she and Alison didn’t speak about.
Natalya had taken to hiding out on the roof of their apartment building for the solitude. “A breath of fresh air,” she’d told them, as she’d made her daily escape. She’d sat up there, arms around her bent legs, watching over the city like an avenging angel.
She had even caught a burglar one day while she was there. Natalya smirked at the memory of dangling him over the edge while he’d pissed his pants and swore in three different languages to never trouble her building again. She did miss that—showing vermin the light.
Not that she’d shared that with Alison. Her lover didn’t need to know the darkness was still there. What if it frightened her? What if it frightened her off?
That didn’t bear thinking about.
She headed further along the hall. There was nothing of Natalya here, beyond one photo of her father that gave her pause each time she saw it. It was from before Vadim had migrated to Australia, still wearing his Russian Army uniform. So proud and straight, his eyes direct and cool. She had another photo of him, secreted on the top shelf of her closet, of his wedding day to Lola. But she couldn’t bring