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seven | warsaw

seven | warsaw

one of the most congested cities in Europe; its residents spend an average of a hundred and six hours per year sitting in traffic, not moving

RAYNA

May 6th, 18:15 (GMT +2)
9 days until it happens

REVENGE IS SWEETER than maple syrup.

It took me twenty minutes of searching every nook and cranny of my body before I finally found the GPS patch Jake planted on my neck. Waterproof, ultra-adhesive, skin-imitating nanotechnology, virtually imperceptible. Sly bastard.

If he wants to waste my time and energy, well. Right back at ya, buddy.

After I ruined his shit, I took the device and stuck it to the wall of a random bus outside Jake's hotel. Then with Sam's help, I hooked up three new trackers to the same signal and dispersed them around the city. Using an app on my cell-phone, I keep one of them turned on at a time, alternating between them, so that fucker'll have to run through all of Warsaw looking for me before he figures it out.

It's a couple hours before sunset. I stand outside a large, three-story brick home, double-checking the address that Sam messaged me. We finally caught a lead in the case – a positive facial recognition on Pavel Sidorov, a well-known, high-level mobster who's apparently been in town for a week. It means we're onto something.

My fingers patter down my black skirt as I rehearse what I'm gonna do once I get inside the house. I'm disguised as a maid. These assholes have women at their beck-and-call twenty-four-seven – there are housekeepers on staff from five AM til two o'clock in the morning. I tracked down the lady who was supposed to be working this evening and bribed her so I could take her place. She didn't need much convincing to ditch these dipshits for the night. (Shocker.) I consult my watch. Right on time; my shift's about to start.

I enter via the backdoor into the servants' break-room. An older woman in a white button-down and dark slacks is already waiting for me with her jacket and purse, ready to flee. She spews some rapid-fire instructions at me in Russian – the boss wants his dinner in half-an-hour; he's receiving three visitors at eight-thirty; the laundry is almost done washing and needs to be moved into the tumble-dryer – and then rushes out the door, leaving me alone.

Okay. Okay. The guests he's expecting later complicate things a little; it'll be harder to get Sidorov alone, and I won't have enough time to interrogate him before his company arrives. I need to neutralize security and wait for them to leave, and then I can wring him for information. Maybe I'll be able to overhear something helpful in the meantime.

But first, I snoop.

Armed with a feather-duster and a pistol hidden beneath my skirt, I take a tour of the house. Hard-wood floors, impeccable wainscotting, neatly-maintained, polished. I reviewed the blueprints Sam sent me before I got here. Three bedrooms upstairs, one in the basement; kitchen, dining room, and study on the ground floor.

There's one guard positioned by the front door, and another stationed outside the study. The security-room sits right off the main entrance with a single guard monitoring the CCTV. The alarm system is sophisticated, but nothing that Sam can't help me solve.

The roasted scent of fresh cooking wafts from the kitchen. Oh yeah, crap. Gotta serve dinner. The cook, a stern, middle-aged blonde woman, stands by the stove dishing out the food. Russian cuisine: golden pierozki, chicken shashlik skewers, beef stroganoff. And a traditional apple cake for dessert, which instantly reminds me of earlier and makes me queasy. I'm a stress-eater, okay? While I fantasized revenge and hatched a last-minute game-plan for tonight, I devoured like half of it, and it was fucking delicious.