Leverage One-Shot: The Wolf at the Door
Title: The Wolf at the Door
Author: downbythebay_4
Rated: R
Warnings: character death
Characters: Eliot Spencer, Damien Moreau, OC’s, (and a wee bit of Parker)
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to their respective owners. I’m just playing around.
Summary: It’s a bit like Little Red Riding Hood, and a bit like Swan Lake. Eliot during the Moreau Years.
Notes: This began as an exploration of the worst thing Eliot had ever done, but as the story went on I found that sadly, for Eliot, this is only the beginning of the Moreau years, not the worst of them. Framed in ‘The Big Bang Job.’ I was playing around with flashbacks; if you’re inclined, let me know how it works.
“What did you do?” said Parker, with something like sadness and fear in her eyes.
“Don’t ask me that, Parker,” Eliot could not meet her gaze. His lip trembled just a bit as he steeled himself to face her. “Because if you ask me, I’m gonna tell you. So please, don’t ask me.”
Parker nodded and Eliot almost lost it. The look was so familiar: understanding, resignation. What did you do? She hadn’t meant to accuse him, but another woman with pale skin and pink lips had asked him that same question once upon a time.
It was ten years prior, when Eliot knocked on a door in Belgrade. The hall was well-lit, clean, and quiet, while most of the tenants slept soundly in their beds. It was almost Christmas and the door was adorned with an evergreen wreath and red ribbon. The woman inside the two bedroom apartment had just received word that her father and thirteen-year-old sister had been murdered in their beds at their country home. He paced in front of her door, resisting the urge to peer futilely through the peephole, imagining her peering back with puffy, bloodshot eyes, wrapped in a shawl, because bereaved women liked to be swaddled, to lie in bed wrapped tightly in the arms of someone who loved them. She was grieving, but she opened the door anyway. He was her bodyguard after all.
Eliot was not sure why Damien Moreau had set his sites on Jovan Petrovic. Then again, the Serbian national had more money than God, more good works to his name than Jesus Christ, better P.R. than Gandhi, the Dali Lama, and Mother Theresa put together, and most importantly, a twenty-four-year-old daughter named Katrina.
Katrina was the closest thing the shattered city of Belgrade had to a crown princess: a socialite, philanthropist, a ballerina with the Serbian National Ballet, and famously single. Her father had actually taken to evaluating suitors on her behalf, as though he were some kind of sultan overseeing the future of his kingdom.
Moreau had all the wealth and power he could want, but lacked the prestige that an association with such a family could provide him. Not to mention that Katrina’s charitable organizations would provide Moreau with seemingly infinite avenues for laundering his dirty money. That was what drove Moreau’s desire to possess her. He had laid her picture in front of Eliot and stabbed his forefinger onto her brow as though he were marking his territory.
“This woman will be my wife.” Damien Moreau spoke only in affirmatives. “My business here won’t be secure until she’s legally bound to me.” Moreau secured Eliot a position as her bodyguard, to protect his investment, eliminating all competition.
When Eliot first saw Katrina, she was shooting coke bottles off of fence posts with her younger sister, Serena, and several members of her father’s security team. From the sound of it, Serena was practicing with a SIG Sauer, while Katrina wielded a comically large shotgun. Their father waved to her and she trotted over, long and willowy, he wondered why the kickback hadn’t thrown her like a rag doll.
Her father introduced them, and she set her sights on him, her eyes jerking suddenly downwards. Eliot had almost managed to work up a blush for decency’s sake when he realized her gaze was not focused on anything below his belt, but rather on it. She eyed the holster at his hip distastefully.
“I don’t like guns.” Her English, like her father’s, was impeccable; her accent seemed more Nebraskan than Baltic, the prestige dialect.
Eliot smiled. “You seem pretty handy with that 12-gauge.”
“Serena enjoys the company,” looking over her shoulder, Katrina smiled lovingly at the young girl with dark hair and eyes, seemingly her polar opposite. “And Michael,” she pointed with her chin to their head of security. “Seems to think it’s important for us to learn the proper respect for firearms.”
Eliot looked her up and down, trying to cold read her, because people were like knives, but they were also like guns: some more likely to go off than others. “I bet that thing gives you a pretty hearty kick,” he said.
“That’s why I like it. One does not usually aim a shotgun without purpose. It unnerves me that something which fits in the palm of my hand can end a life so quickly.” Her breath was even, her eyes clear, her skin so pale he could practically see the pulse beating in her neck, slow and steady.
Eliot drew his weapon, removed the magazine, and handed both over to the head of security. “There. Now I hope we can be friends.”
Her father stared incredulously. “How do you intend to protect my daughter?” He gestured wildly to the castoff firearm.
“I won’t need it,” Eliot’s eyes never left Katrina’s face. He found her sly smile precious.
“But-”
“Mr. Petrovic,” Eliot snapped his gaze to meet her father’s eyes. “I promise you, your daughter is in good hands.” It was a promise he had not intended to break.
Her father was confused, but relented. “In that case, I’ll let you two become acquainted.” He started down the walk to meet his younger daughter.
Eliot flashed Katrina his most charming, Elvis-like grin. “I meant what I said. I hope we’ll get along.”
Pointing towards a gazebo some ways off, Katrina motioned for him to walk and she followed suit. “You’ll meet no resistance from me,” she assured him, allowing her fingers to dance across the leaves of the tiger lilies as they passed the flowerbeds. “I don’t always appreciate my father’s precautions, but I understand his concerns.”
She turned to him and Eliot made a conscious effort to not look angry, instead nodding in understanding. Women liked noncommittal gestures, just so they knew you were paying attention. She met his eyes and Eliot suddenly felt as though he were under great scrutiny.
“He has also forbidden me to return to my own apartment without protection. So,” she laughed good-naturedly. “We’re going to have to learn to live with each other.”
She skipped up to the gazebo and leveraged herself around one of the posts, as though she were trying to recreate a scene from a black and white musical.
“Do you always do what you’re told?” Eliot said stepping up into the gazebo as she perched upon the shaded bench.
“I trust my father; I try to be a good daughter,” she said.
Eliot squinted and decided to take a gamble. “I bet you’ve got a secret rebellious streak,” he pressed his face very close to hers, their noses nearly touching. “Some hot young boy toy with a mo-ped on the side? Your secret’s safe with me.”
Katrina just shook her head.
“No one who looks as good as you can stay locked up in an ivory tower forever,” he was actively trying to flatter her now, to win her confidence and her approval. Katrina turned out to be a harder egg to crack.
The door to the apartment opened and Eliot stepped inside; it was a familiar sight to him now, almost like home. The furnishings were simple, earth tones, flowers, knickknacks and lots of pictures, though Katrina herself was in very few of them. There was one in the front room of Katrina and Serena and their father, posing in their gardens, and another that her father had framed from her most recent performance of Swan Lake, her lithe body bending impossibly on a small platform on an entertainment barge on the Danube.
Inside it was comfortably warm and dimly lit. As the door closed behind him Katrina threw her arms around him. “Oh, Eliot,” she sobbed, burying her face into his chest. His shirt soon grew damp.
Eliot closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her. For a moment he thought about double-crossing Moreau. He had contacts; he could call in a favor, get her out of the country, to England or France or the American Midwest, somewhere she could find work, raise children; be alive. He could pull some drug addict off the street, thankful to be out of the cold, and set fire to the apartment: offer Moreau the heart of a doe to spare the life of the princess.
The moment passed as Katrina’s body suddenly grew stiff. She had felt the gun at his waist pressed against her belly. He closed his eyes tighter and prayed that she would mistake it for his belt buckle, or an erection, anything as long as she would only melt into him once more, like ivy encircles an oak tree.
Instead she took a step back. Her eyes were puffier than he had imagined them, but still fiercely blue. The void between her nose and mouth was chapped and red. She had left a smear of snot on the front of his shirt.
“Eliot,” her voice shook. “Why do you have a gun?”
He could have lied. Perhaps she would have believed him. Instead he stood in silence, staring at the floor, as she continued to back away. Her family was gone and he was to blame. There was no escape now. Moreau had not intended to leave that option open to him. When he finally worked up the courage to look at her there was nothing but sheer, wild terror in her eyes.
“What did you do?”
In retrospect, Eliot should have ended it then and there. It would have spared her the heartache of the moments to come, the utter degradation. But at the time he thought she deserved the truth, had hoped, perhaps, to clear his conscience impossibly of something of which he could never be clean.
“I work for Damien Moreau.” He watched the words strike her like a blow. Katrina nearly collapsed, grabbing onto the coffee table to force her body upright.
“I’ve worked for him the whole time,” Eliot checked a tremor in his hand as he brushed his hair out of his face. “It was part of his plan to win your father over. I only ever meant to keep you safe.”
Katrina pointed an accusing finger. “We trusted you. I trusted you,” she moved through the room like a wounded animal, running into the furniture, scrambling with both her arms and legs. “You used me.”
“No,” Eliot was possessed with the sudden urge to reach out to touch her. She was grieving; she needed comfort, but he had already forfeited his right to comfort her. “I swear. The affection I have for you was never a part of Moreau’s plan.”
He hadn’t used the word love. It wasn’t the kind of word he threw around, especially at times like this. He had felt something for her, not at first, but for all his experience with the art of seduction he had been won over by her gentleness and grace. The joy in her eyes whenever he paid special attention to the children at the shelter she frequented, hoisting them over his head, spinning them around in circles; it had become something of an addition. Of all her potential suitors, perhaps he was the most like Moreau after all.
“This is Moreau’s way of punishing us,” she covered her mouth suddenly. “You never touched me!”
She was heading for the kitchen, for the telephone mounted on the wall. She wouldn’t reach it, but even if she did, no one could reach her in time. Even if the neighbors heard, what would they do? Anyone privileged enough to reside in such a cushy tenement wouldn’t dare make waves or get involved, not even for one of their own. Nothing short of the hand of God could stop it now, and Eliot had long since ceased to believe in a benevolent God. Mercy. She was at his mercy.
“I know,” he agreed, taking a measured step into the room, keeping his distance from her, like trying to sneak up on a jackrabbit.
“They’re dead because of me.” He could see the pieces snapping together in her mind, staring at him and the gun at his waist.
“No,” she shook her head. “Tell me it wasn’t you.”
Eliot closed his eyes, his tongue feeling thick in the back of his throat. Katrina screamed, the sound you made after holding your breath, waiting for the coming some great beast too horrible to mention, utter heartbreak. Eliot knew he had to act quickly now, if any sound could have roused her neighbors and inspired them to action, it was that.
“Serena never woke up,” he said, like consoling a spooked horse. His eyes burned as he remembered the girl’s dark hair fanned out on her pillow, the soft sigh that escaped her lips as she moved in her sleep, the fingers of her left hand clutching the leg of a teddy bear. She smelled like apples.
“It was quick, I swear,” Eliot held his hands up in parley. Petrovic had never made it into the bedroom to see his daughter’s body, and that had been the kindest thing Eliot had done all night.
As the true, mortal danger of the situation set in he could see the adrenaline flood Katrina’s body. Her breathing hitched, her muscles tensed, her faced flushed with heat, her pupils dilating as her eyes darted this way and that across the room. Faced with death, her body seemed to vibrate with sudden life.
“He sent you here to kill me, too,” she said, her face was streaked with tears still, but she was beyond grief or any other human emotion. Every fiber in her body was focused on survival, base and animal.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “But Moreau will never stop. He’d kill me and do worse to you. I don’t have a choice.”
Katrina laughed like a woman gone mad. “Do you always do as you’re told?”
She lunged for the phone. He got their first and ripped the whole jack out of the wall with one hand. Katrina skidded to a stop, nearly tripping over her own feet, eyeballing the front door and the hallway behind him, leading to her bedroom. Eliot took two steps to the left, just to make it blatantly obvious that they were trapped.
Eliot checked his breathing. She could still retreat to the balcony, to throw herself to her death, but suicide was a sin. Moreau had not intended for this to be quick or easy. This was punishment for the both of them.
“It’s not your fault,” he said, slowly drawing the gun from his belt. “None of it.”
It seemed so utterly ridiculous that at a time like this, he should try to offer her absolution. He should have known better.
“Katrina.” It was only yesterday that Eliot knocked on the powder room door. “You’re late for brunch.” They had arrived at her father’s house that morning for a meeting with Moreau; the first time all four of them would be together. He had been playing dumb all morning and it was beginning to grate on his nerves.
“Let her be, Mr. Spencer,” Moreau called from the veranda. “It’s a woman’s prerogative to keep her men waiting.”
After a few moments of bustling, Katrina’s head appeared in the doorway.
“Eliot,” she beckoned him forward with one finger. “Give me a hand in here.”
Eliot looked back to the waiting company beyond the glass patio doors.
“By all means, Eliot,” Petrovic waved him on. “The sooner she has her satisfaction, the sooner we can all eat.”
Eliot slipped into the bathroom and let the door close behind him. Katrina smoothed down her dress, looking at her reflection.
“Do I look alright?” she asked, looking back at him tentatively biting her lip.
Eliot looked her up and down, and fastened another button at the top of her dress, his fingers lingering at her throat to right the golden charm hanging from her neck.
“Now you’re perfect.”
Katrina rolled her eyes. “What do you think of Damien?”
“Does it matter what I think?” he asked.
“You protect me,” Katrina turned, looking up into his face. “I trust your judgment.”
Eliot shook his head. “Don’t you ever think for yourself?”
“What we had,” her eyes flicked away in embarrassment.
“Lying on the couch and drinking beer,” he said doubtfully.
She turned away from him in the small space, met her own eyes in her reflection. “It certainly was something, wasn’t it?”
“They’re waiting for us,” Eliot said, slipping out of the powder room.
“Eliot,” she called after him. He stopped and turned to her, keenly aware that they were in the sightlines of the table out on the garden terrace.
“Your tie,” she said, folding up his collar to adjust the knot at his throat. “Belongs at your belt buckle, not your navel.”
Eliot stood passively as she undid the knot; she was smiling. His eyes flicked up in time to see Moreau watching them in interest.
“Stop,” he said, grabbing her wrist.
Katrina’s smile fell as her hands fell away from his collar. “I was just trying to help,” she muttered, her heels clicking on the masonry as she walked off.
On the veranda Moreau spoke to Petrovic; he hadn’t lowered his voice, perhaps he thought they were having a private conversation, but Eliot had always had good ears. Then again, perhaps Moreau had intended for the remark to be overheard.
“We live in a world where a kiss means no more than a wink or nod but for a woman to fix a man’s tie, that is intimate.”
Katrina was closer to the table than he, but if she had heard Moreau as well, she didn’t seem to care.
Brunch began amicably, and for a while Eliot thought that perhaps they had dodged a bullet. On the car ride home, he could explain to Katrina how taken he was with Moreau, she could accept his proposal from their balcony seats at the opening performance of The Nutcracker Ballet, and all would be well. Somewhere in the middle of coffee and fruit compote, it turned to catastrophe.
“I still worry,” Petrovic said offhandedly, tipping his glass toward Eliot. “Though Mr. Spencer has been very attentive.”
Eliot waved him off genially, hoping to turn their conversation elsewhere.
“He’s very good with the children,” Katrina said, her fork making a cringe-worthy scraping sound as she pulled it from between her teeth.
“The children?” Moreau sat forward.
“At the shelter where I volunteer,” Katrina nodded.
“I am just glad to know Katrina won’t be venturing to that part of the city alone,” her father offered, as Eliot struggled to maintain a pleasant expression.
“Well,” Moreau adjusted his napkin. “After the wedding, you certainly won’t have to worry about that. No wife of mine is going to spend her days serving soup to the homeless.”
Katrina sat forward on her elbows, her nimble fingers pressed to her pink lips. “Is that so?” In a gesture so subtle not even Eliot had anticipated it, she turned her wrist and unseated Moreau’s coffee into his lap.
Moreau jumped back and swept the soggy, steaming mess of his lap with a curse. The mug broke on the pavement.
“Please excuse me,” Katrina rose from her seat. “I’m sure you men would like to adjourn for cigars and bourbon.”
Moreau’s nostrils flared, but he was still trying to keep the extent of his rage in check.
Petrovic stood as well, to follow his daughter. “I think that’s quite enough brunch; I trust you can see yourself out.”
Eliot sat in silence, staring at the broken china strewn across the patio and the pool of black coffee seeping into the cracks in the pavement, quite unsure of how to proceed. He realized all too late, just how off his game he was. Buying into Katrina’s life, her compassion, he had gone soft.
Moreau glared up at him. “Bourbon?”
Katrina ran her hands through a mess of unwashed, flaxen hair. “I forgive you,” she choked on the words.
“What?” Eliot was sure he had misheard.
“I forgive you,” she said, running her sleeve under her nose. “That doesn’t make it right. It was despicable, what you did. You’re going to pay for it, but not by me. You’re not on my soul any more. I forgive you.”
“Fuck,” Eliot had nothing left. With the last bit of sympathy she had in her, she had said those deplorable words, and then there was nothing left of the Katrina he knew; he had liked her. It was so fucking sad he could barely stand it.
He stepped toward her.
“I’ll fight you,” she scrambled backwards, one arm held out protectively, tears streaming, snot running, her chest heaving with exertion.
Eliot choked on a bitter sob. “I’ll win.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ll still fight you.”
“Let’s even the odds then,” Eliot held the gun by the barrel and handed it over to her. “Take it.” It was a stupid thing to do, but the whole evening so far had defied reason.
Katrina reached out tentatively and took the gun.
“You know how to rack it?” He asked. In one swift motion she jerked the slide forward and aimed the gun at him.
“You’ve got one shot,” he said, spreading his arms. “Make it count.”
The gun shook in her trembling hands. She couldn’t do it; Eliot knew well enough that knowing how to use a gun was one matter, knowing how to take a life was another. Even like this, justified.
Eliot stepped toward her. “I took that gun and I shot your sister in the head and if you don’t shoot me dead right now I’ll kill you too.”
Eliot lunged at her. In the space of time it took for him to close the space between them the gun went off three times, only two of the bullets hit Eliot. The first struck his shoulder, and was of minimal concern to him, the second ripped through his gut and bowled him over.
He collided with Katrina and they both fell to the floor, the gun slid under her sofa. Eliot rolled onto his back, his face contorted in pain. He had forgotten how much getting shot hurt. For a blissful moment he thought that he would die, and then he came to his senses. Judging from the placement of the entry wound, she had somehow managed to miss all his major organs. The bullet was probably having a field day with his intestines, but he had sixty minutes to finish the job and get to a hospital before succumbing to sepsis, and Katrina was frantically trying to disentangle herself from him.
Eliot realized he was lying on her hair the same moment she drove the heel of her hand into the growing red stain on the lapel of his grey jacket.
“Bitch!” He grunted, grabbing her ankle, pulling her across the floor towards him, tendon and bone grinding under his grip. She screamed and Eliot only half-realized that it was her bad ankle, the one she had injured during a performance of Coppelia. He tried to climb on top of her, using his size to his advantage.
Katrina was a dancer, she was stronger than her size led you to believe, and she had danced Swanhilda’s final variation with a torn ligament. She knew pain, but not terror. She wasn’t focused enough to do any real damage, swinging and scratching haphazardly. He grabbed her arm, trying to wrangle her into a shoulder lock their bodies entwined so that there was no telling where one ended and the other began. Somehow, impossibly, her foot came down on the back of his neck and for a moment Eliot saw stars.
On Sunday he made dinner, vegetarian chili with cornbread and haricots verts amandine. Katrina had developed and inexplicable affection for the savory comfort foods of his youth.
“You know,” she said, leaning on the counter, placing a crisp green bean between her teeth. “Ballerinas are only unstable bitches because they don’t eat. Lucky for me, I have you.”
Eliot slapped her hand away and went back to pouring a dark lager over caramelized onions. Katrina tip-toed around him and took another two beers from the fridge, opening them one at a time with the hem of her shirt.
“Explain to me again,” he said, tasting the chili. “Why you don’t have the lead in The Nutcracker.”
“Because Clara is a child’s role,” she said, sipping her beer. “I’ve played Giselle, in ballet’s greatest tragedy. You don't go back to dancing with toys after that.”
“Okay,” Eliot said, adding more green pepper to the chili. “This has been bugging me, I saw Giselle, I saw Coppelia, hell, I even liked Don Quixote, but what makes Swan Lake so special? It’s about a damn bird, for crying out loud.”
“Bite your tongue,” Katrina slapped his arm.
“Not appropriate,” Eliot pointed the wooden spoon at her. “No violence in the kitchen.”
Katrina let her head hang down. “I apologize.”
Eliot passed her a bowl of chili and waved her on as they rounded the corner to settle on the couch. She handed him a beer and put a greedy spoonful to her mouth.
“The Swan Queen,” Katrina said between bites. “Is fantasy, magical. You think that makes her absurd, but it doesn’t. Her love for the prince is doomed from the start, they come from two different worlds, and the sorrow that it brings makes her noble. Pity-the universal human emotion.”
Coming back to himself as Katrina scrambled across the hardwood floor, Eliot thought and didn’t think. Her knees were bad, he caught one under his arm, used it to leverage her on top of him. Pinned her neck in the crook of his elbow. She thrashed madly and with one swift crack went still in his arms.
Eliot took a ragged breath, and let her body roll away. They were both covered in his blood; it had been a long time since he had shed so much. He felt tired and closed his eyes.
Eliot woke in a bed with paper sheets. There was classical music playing softly. He tried to sit up, but found himself too dazed by drugs and encumbered by wires and tubes. As reason returned to him, the tube down his throat and the air it forced into his lungs became increasingly uncomfortable. He strained against the wires in his arms.
“The doctors pulled two bullets out of you.” Moreau’s voice invaded the quite with agonizing self-assurance.
“No need to worry though, only the best work for me.” The volume of the music increased. “I love Schubert. You know the funny thing is, the bullets they pulled out of you, came from your own gun.”
Moreau rambled on, the ambient sound of the strings was frenzied and feverish, but Eliot still could not find the mental fortitude to open his eyes.
“I can’t imagine how a little ballerina managed to disarm the great Eliot Spencer,” a machine beeped somewhere above his head. “You don’t get to fall on your sword. Not now that things are just getting interesting.”
The drugs were beginning to take effect. Schubert played on the radio in the corner as the morphine induced fog closed in around him. Eliot slept and dreamt of swans.
End Notes:Inspired by…
Edit: My complete writing playlist, if you have a care or are familiar with any of the music; aren't I silly?
“Keepsake” by State Radio
“If I Go, I’m Going” by Gregory Alan Isakov
“Coppelia, Act III: Danse de fete” (Swanhilda’s variation) composed by Leo Delibes
“Swan Lake, Act II: Scene” composed by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
“Set Fire to the Third Bar” by Snow Patrol and Martha Wainwright
“Death and the Maiden: I. Allegro” by Franz Schubert (Featured above. Allegro…ha ha, right.)
“Collide (Acoustic Version)” by Howie Day
“I Will Follow You Into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie
“Pavane for a Dead Princess” composed by Maurice Ravel
Author: downbythebay_4
Rated: R
Warnings: character death
Characters: Eliot Spencer, Damien Moreau, OC’s, (and a wee bit of Parker)
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to their respective owners. I’m just playing around.
Summary: It’s a bit like Little Red Riding Hood, and a bit like Swan Lake. Eliot during the Moreau Years.
Notes: This began as an exploration of the worst thing Eliot had ever done, but as the story went on I found that sadly, for Eliot, this is only the beginning of the Moreau years, not the worst of them. Framed in ‘The Big Bang Job.’ I was playing around with flashbacks; if you’re inclined, let me know how it works.
“What did you do?” said Parker, with something like sadness and fear in her eyes.
“Don’t ask me that, Parker,” Eliot could not meet her gaze. His lip trembled just a bit as he steeled himself to face her. “Because if you ask me, I’m gonna tell you. So please, don’t ask me.”
Parker nodded and Eliot almost lost it. The look was so familiar: understanding, resignation. What did you do? She hadn’t meant to accuse him, but another woman with pale skin and pink lips had asked him that same question once upon a time.
It was ten years prior, when Eliot knocked on a door in Belgrade. The hall was well-lit, clean, and quiet, while most of the tenants slept soundly in their beds. It was almost Christmas and the door was adorned with an evergreen wreath and red ribbon. The woman inside the two bedroom apartment had just received word that her father and thirteen-year-old sister had been murdered in their beds at their country home. He paced in front of her door, resisting the urge to peer futilely through the peephole, imagining her peering back with puffy, bloodshot eyes, wrapped in a shawl, because bereaved women liked to be swaddled, to lie in bed wrapped tightly in the arms of someone who loved them. She was grieving, but she opened the door anyway. He was her bodyguard after all.
Eliot was not sure why Damien Moreau had set his sites on Jovan Petrovic. Then again, the Serbian national had more money than God, more good works to his name than Jesus Christ, better P.R. than Gandhi, the Dali Lama, and Mother Theresa put together, and most importantly, a twenty-four-year-old daughter named Katrina.
Katrina was the closest thing the shattered city of Belgrade had to a crown princess: a socialite, philanthropist, a ballerina with the Serbian National Ballet, and famously single. Her father had actually taken to evaluating suitors on her behalf, as though he were some kind of sultan overseeing the future of his kingdom.
Moreau had all the wealth and power he could want, but lacked the prestige that an association with such a family could provide him. Not to mention that Katrina’s charitable organizations would provide Moreau with seemingly infinite avenues for laundering his dirty money. That was what drove Moreau’s desire to possess her. He had laid her picture in front of Eliot and stabbed his forefinger onto her brow as though he were marking his territory.
“This woman will be my wife.” Damien Moreau spoke only in affirmatives. “My business here won’t be secure until she’s legally bound to me.” Moreau secured Eliot a position as her bodyguard, to protect his investment, eliminating all competition.
When Eliot first saw Katrina, she was shooting coke bottles off of fence posts with her younger sister, Serena, and several members of her father’s security team. From the sound of it, Serena was practicing with a SIG Sauer, while Katrina wielded a comically large shotgun. Their father waved to her and she trotted over, long and willowy, he wondered why the kickback hadn’t thrown her like a rag doll.
Her father introduced them, and she set her sights on him, her eyes jerking suddenly downwards. Eliot had almost managed to work up a blush for decency’s sake when he realized her gaze was not focused on anything below his belt, but rather on it. She eyed the holster at his hip distastefully.
“I don’t like guns.” Her English, like her father’s, was impeccable; her accent seemed more Nebraskan than Baltic, the prestige dialect.
Eliot smiled. “You seem pretty handy with that 12-gauge.”
“Serena enjoys the company,” looking over her shoulder, Katrina smiled lovingly at the young girl with dark hair and eyes, seemingly her polar opposite. “And Michael,” she pointed with her chin to their head of security. “Seems to think it’s important for us to learn the proper respect for firearms.”
Eliot looked her up and down, trying to cold read her, because people were like knives, but they were also like guns: some more likely to go off than others. “I bet that thing gives you a pretty hearty kick,” he said.
“That’s why I like it. One does not usually aim a shotgun without purpose. It unnerves me that something which fits in the palm of my hand can end a life so quickly.” Her breath was even, her eyes clear, her skin so pale he could practically see the pulse beating in her neck, slow and steady.
Eliot drew his weapon, removed the magazine, and handed both over to the head of security. “There. Now I hope we can be friends.”
Her father stared incredulously. “How do you intend to protect my daughter?” He gestured wildly to the castoff firearm.
“I won’t need it,” Eliot’s eyes never left Katrina’s face. He found her sly smile precious.
“But-”
“Mr. Petrovic,” Eliot snapped his gaze to meet her father’s eyes. “I promise you, your daughter is in good hands.” It was a promise he had not intended to break.
Her father was confused, but relented. “In that case, I’ll let you two become acquainted.” He started down the walk to meet his younger daughter.
Eliot flashed Katrina his most charming, Elvis-like grin. “I meant what I said. I hope we’ll get along.”
Pointing towards a gazebo some ways off, Katrina motioned for him to walk and she followed suit. “You’ll meet no resistance from me,” she assured him, allowing her fingers to dance across the leaves of the tiger lilies as they passed the flowerbeds. “I don’t always appreciate my father’s precautions, but I understand his concerns.”
She turned to him and Eliot made a conscious effort to not look angry, instead nodding in understanding. Women liked noncommittal gestures, just so they knew you were paying attention. She met his eyes and Eliot suddenly felt as though he were under great scrutiny.
“He has also forbidden me to return to my own apartment without protection. So,” she laughed good-naturedly. “We’re going to have to learn to live with each other.”
She skipped up to the gazebo and leveraged herself around one of the posts, as though she were trying to recreate a scene from a black and white musical.
“Do you always do what you’re told?” Eliot said stepping up into the gazebo as she perched upon the shaded bench.
“I trust my father; I try to be a good daughter,” she said.
Eliot squinted and decided to take a gamble. “I bet you’ve got a secret rebellious streak,” he pressed his face very close to hers, their noses nearly touching. “Some hot young boy toy with a mo-ped on the side? Your secret’s safe with me.”
Katrina just shook her head.
“No one who looks as good as you can stay locked up in an ivory tower forever,” he was actively trying to flatter her now, to win her confidence and her approval. Katrina turned out to be a harder egg to crack.
The door to the apartment opened and Eliot stepped inside; it was a familiar sight to him now, almost like home. The furnishings were simple, earth tones, flowers, knickknacks and lots of pictures, though Katrina herself was in very few of them. There was one in the front room of Katrina and Serena and their father, posing in their gardens, and another that her father had framed from her most recent performance of Swan Lake, her lithe body bending impossibly on a small platform on an entertainment barge on the Danube.
Inside it was comfortably warm and dimly lit. As the door closed behind him Katrina threw her arms around him. “Oh, Eliot,” she sobbed, burying her face into his chest. His shirt soon grew damp.
Eliot closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her. For a moment he thought about double-crossing Moreau. He had contacts; he could call in a favor, get her out of the country, to England or France or the American Midwest, somewhere she could find work, raise children; be alive. He could pull some drug addict off the street, thankful to be out of the cold, and set fire to the apartment: offer Moreau the heart of a doe to spare the life of the princess.
The moment passed as Katrina’s body suddenly grew stiff. She had felt the gun at his waist pressed against her belly. He closed his eyes tighter and prayed that she would mistake it for his belt buckle, or an erection, anything as long as she would only melt into him once more, like ivy encircles an oak tree.
Instead she took a step back. Her eyes were puffier than he had imagined them, but still fiercely blue. The void between her nose and mouth was chapped and red. She had left a smear of snot on the front of his shirt.
“Eliot,” her voice shook. “Why do you have a gun?”
He could have lied. Perhaps she would have believed him. Instead he stood in silence, staring at the floor, as she continued to back away. Her family was gone and he was to blame. There was no escape now. Moreau had not intended to leave that option open to him. When he finally worked up the courage to look at her there was nothing but sheer, wild terror in her eyes.
“What did you do?”
In retrospect, Eliot should have ended it then and there. It would have spared her the heartache of the moments to come, the utter degradation. But at the time he thought she deserved the truth, had hoped, perhaps, to clear his conscience impossibly of something of which he could never be clean.
“I work for Damien Moreau.” He watched the words strike her like a blow. Katrina nearly collapsed, grabbing onto the coffee table to force her body upright.
“I’ve worked for him the whole time,” Eliot checked a tremor in his hand as he brushed his hair out of his face. “It was part of his plan to win your father over. I only ever meant to keep you safe.”
Katrina pointed an accusing finger. “We trusted you. I trusted you,” she moved through the room like a wounded animal, running into the furniture, scrambling with both her arms and legs. “You used me.”
“No,” Eliot was possessed with the sudden urge to reach out to touch her. She was grieving; she needed comfort, but he had already forfeited his right to comfort her. “I swear. The affection I have for you was never a part of Moreau’s plan.”
He hadn’t used the word love. It wasn’t the kind of word he threw around, especially at times like this. He had felt something for her, not at first, but for all his experience with the art of seduction he had been won over by her gentleness and grace. The joy in her eyes whenever he paid special attention to the children at the shelter she frequented, hoisting them over his head, spinning them around in circles; it had become something of an addition. Of all her potential suitors, perhaps he was the most like Moreau after all.
“This is Moreau’s way of punishing us,” she covered her mouth suddenly. “You never touched me!”
She was heading for the kitchen, for the telephone mounted on the wall. She wouldn’t reach it, but even if she did, no one could reach her in time. Even if the neighbors heard, what would they do? Anyone privileged enough to reside in such a cushy tenement wouldn’t dare make waves or get involved, not even for one of their own. Nothing short of the hand of God could stop it now, and Eliot had long since ceased to believe in a benevolent God. Mercy. She was at his mercy.
“I know,” he agreed, taking a measured step into the room, keeping his distance from her, like trying to sneak up on a jackrabbit.
“They’re dead because of me.” He could see the pieces snapping together in her mind, staring at him and the gun at his waist.
“No,” she shook her head. “Tell me it wasn’t you.”
Eliot closed his eyes, his tongue feeling thick in the back of his throat. Katrina screamed, the sound you made after holding your breath, waiting for the coming some great beast too horrible to mention, utter heartbreak. Eliot knew he had to act quickly now, if any sound could have roused her neighbors and inspired them to action, it was that.
“Serena never woke up,” he said, like consoling a spooked horse. His eyes burned as he remembered the girl’s dark hair fanned out on her pillow, the soft sigh that escaped her lips as she moved in her sleep, the fingers of her left hand clutching the leg of a teddy bear. She smelled like apples.
“It was quick, I swear,” Eliot held his hands up in parley. Petrovic had never made it into the bedroom to see his daughter’s body, and that had been the kindest thing Eliot had done all night.
As the true, mortal danger of the situation set in he could see the adrenaline flood Katrina’s body. Her breathing hitched, her muscles tensed, her faced flushed with heat, her pupils dilating as her eyes darted this way and that across the room. Faced with death, her body seemed to vibrate with sudden life.
“He sent you here to kill me, too,” she said, her face was streaked with tears still, but she was beyond grief or any other human emotion. Every fiber in her body was focused on survival, base and animal.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “But Moreau will never stop. He’d kill me and do worse to you. I don’t have a choice.”
Katrina laughed like a woman gone mad. “Do you always do as you’re told?”
She lunged for the phone. He got their first and ripped the whole jack out of the wall with one hand. Katrina skidded to a stop, nearly tripping over her own feet, eyeballing the front door and the hallway behind him, leading to her bedroom. Eliot took two steps to the left, just to make it blatantly obvious that they were trapped.
Eliot checked his breathing. She could still retreat to the balcony, to throw herself to her death, but suicide was a sin. Moreau had not intended for this to be quick or easy. This was punishment for the both of them.
“It’s not your fault,” he said, slowly drawing the gun from his belt. “None of it.”
It seemed so utterly ridiculous that at a time like this, he should try to offer her absolution. He should have known better.
“Katrina.” It was only yesterday that Eliot knocked on the powder room door. “You’re late for brunch.” They had arrived at her father’s house that morning for a meeting with Moreau; the first time all four of them would be together. He had been playing dumb all morning and it was beginning to grate on his nerves.
“Let her be, Mr. Spencer,” Moreau called from the veranda. “It’s a woman’s prerogative to keep her men waiting.”
After a few moments of bustling, Katrina’s head appeared in the doorway.
“Eliot,” she beckoned him forward with one finger. “Give me a hand in here.”
Eliot looked back to the waiting company beyond the glass patio doors.
“By all means, Eliot,” Petrovic waved him on. “The sooner she has her satisfaction, the sooner we can all eat.”
Eliot slipped into the bathroom and let the door close behind him. Katrina smoothed down her dress, looking at her reflection.
“Do I look alright?” she asked, looking back at him tentatively biting her lip.
Eliot looked her up and down, and fastened another button at the top of her dress, his fingers lingering at her throat to right the golden charm hanging from her neck.
“Now you’re perfect.”
Katrina rolled her eyes. “What do you think of Damien?”
“Does it matter what I think?” he asked.
“You protect me,” Katrina turned, looking up into his face. “I trust your judgment.”
Eliot shook his head. “Don’t you ever think for yourself?”
“What we had,” her eyes flicked away in embarrassment.
“Lying on the couch and drinking beer,” he said doubtfully.
She turned away from him in the small space, met her own eyes in her reflection. “It certainly was something, wasn’t it?”
“They’re waiting for us,” Eliot said, slipping out of the powder room.
“Eliot,” she called after him. He stopped and turned to her, keenly aware that they were in the sightlines of the table out on the garden terrace.
“Your tie,” she said, folding up his collar to adjust the knot at his throat. “Belongs at your belt buckle, not your navel.”
Eliot stood passively as she undid the knot; she was smiling. His eyes flicked up in time to see Moreau watching them in interest.
“Stop,” he said, grabbing her wrist.
Katrina’s smile fell as her hands fell away from his collar. “I was just trying to help,” she muttered, her heels clicking on the masonry as she walked off.
On the veranda Moreau spoke to Petrovic; he hadn’t lowered his voice, perhaps he thought they were having a private conversation, but Eliot had always had good ears. Then again, perhaps Moreau had intended for the remark to be overheard.
“We live in a world where a kiss means no more than a wink or nod but for a woman to fix a man’s tie, that is intimate.”
Katrina was closer to the table than he, but if she had heard Moreau as well, she didn’t seem to care.
Brunch began amicably, and for a while Eliot thought that perhaps they had dodged a bullet. On the car ride home, he could explain to Katrina how taken he was with Moreau, she could accept his proposal from their balcony seats at the opening performance of The Nutcracker Ballet, and all would be well. Somewhere in the middle of coffee and fruit compote, it turned to catastrophe.
“I still worry,” Petrovic said offhandedly, tipping his glass toward Eliot. “Though Mr. Spencer has been very attentive.”
Eliot waved him off genially, hoping to turn their conversation elsewhere.
“He’s very good with the children,” Katrina said, her fork making a cringe-worthy scraping sound as she pulled it from between her teeth.
“The children?” Moreau sat forward.
“At the shelter where I volunteer,” Katrina nodded.
“I am just glad to know Katrina won’t be venturing to that part of the city alone,” her father offered, as Eliot struggled to maintain a pleasant expression.
“Well,” Moreau adjusted his napkin. “After the wedding, you certainly won’t have to worry about that. No wife of mine is going to spend her days serving soup to the homeless.”
Katrina sat forward on her elbows, her nimble fingers pressed to her pink lips. “Is that so?” In a gesture so subtle not even Eliot had anticipated it, she turned her wrist and unseated Moreau’s coffee into his lap.
Moreau jumped back and swept the soggy, steaming mess of his lap with a curse. The mug broke on the pavement.
“Please excuse me,” Katrina rose from her seat. “I’m sure you men would like to adjourn for cigars and bourbon.”
Moreau’s nostrils flared, but he was still trying to keep the extent of his rage in check.
Petrovic stood as well, to follow his daughter. “I think that’s quite enough brunch; I trust you can see yourself out.”
Eliot sat in silence, staring at the broken china strewn across the patio and the pool of black coffee seeping into the cracks in the pavement, quite unsure of how to proceed. He realized all too late, just how off his game he was. Buying into Katrina’s life, her compassion, he had gone soft.
Moreau glared up at him. “Bourbon?”
Katrina ran her hands through a mess of unwashed, flaxen hair. “I forgive you,” she choked on the words.
“What?” Eliot was sure he had misheard.
“I forgive you,” she said, running her sleeve under her nose. “That doesn’t make it right. It was despicable, what you did. You’re going to pay for it, but not by me. You’re not on my soul any more. I forgive you.”
“Fuck,” Eliot had nothing left. With the last bit of sympathy she had in her, she had said those deplorable words, and then there was nothing left of the Katrina he knew; he had liked her. It was so fucking sad he could barely stand it.
He stepped toward her.
“I’ll fight you,” she scrambled backwards, one arm held out protectively, tears streaming, snot running, her chest heaving with exertion.
Eliot choked on a bitter sob. “I’ll win.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ll still fight you.”
“Let’s even the odds then,” Eliot held the gun by the barrel and handed it over to her. “Take it.” It was a stupid thing to do, but the whole evening so far had defied reason.
Katrina reached out tentatively and took the gun.
“You know how to rack it?” He asked. In one swift motion she jerked the slide forward and aimed the gun at him.
“You’ve got one shot,” he said, spreading his arms. “Make it count.”
The gun shook in her trembling hands. She couldn’t do it; Eliot knew well enough that knowing how to use a gun was one matter, knowing how to take a life was another. Even like this, justified.
Eliot stepped toward her. “I took that gun and I shot your sister in the head and if you don’t shoot me dead right now I’ll kill you too.”
Eliot lunged at her. In the space of time it took for him to close the space between them the gun went off three times, only two of the bullets hit Eliot. The first struck his shoulder, and was of minimal concern to him, the second ripped through his gut and bowled him over.
He collided with Katrina and they both fell to the floor, the gun slid under her sofa. Eliot rolled onto his back, his face contorted in pain. He had forgotten how much getting shot hurt. For a blissful moment he thought that he would die, and then he came to his senses. Judging from the placement of the entry wound, she had somehow managed to miss all his major organs. The bullet was probably having a field day with his intestines, but he had sixty minutes to finish the job and get to a hospital before succumbing to sepsis, and Katrina was frantically trying to disentangle herself from him.
Eliot realized he was lying on her hair the same moment she drove the heel of her hand into the growing red stain on the lapel of his grey jacket.
“Bitch!” He grunted, grabbing her ankle, pulling her across the floor towards him, tendon and bone grinding under his grip. She screamed and Eliot only half-realized that it was her bad ankle, the one she had injured during a performance of Coppelia. He tried to climb on top of her, using his size to his advantage.
Katrina was a dancer, she was stronger than her size led you to believe, and she had danced Swanhilda’s final variation with a torn ligament. She knew pain, but not terror. She wasn’t focused enough to do any real damage, swinging and scratching haphazardly. He grabbed her arm, trying to wrangle her into a shoulder lock their bodies entwined so that there was no telling where one ended and the other began. Somehow, impossibly, her foot came down on the back of his neck and for a moment Eliot saw stars.
On Sunday he made dinner, vegetarian chili with cornbread and haricots verts amandine. Katrina had developed and inexplicable affection for the savory comfort foods of his youth.
“You know,” she said, leaning on the counter, placing a crisp green bean between her teeth. “Ballerinas are only unstable bitches because they don’t eat. Lucky for me, I have you.”
Eliot slapped her hand away and went back to pouring a dark lager over caramelized onions. Katrina tip-toed around him and took another two beers from the fridge, opening them one at a time with the hem of her shirt.
“Explain to me again,” he said, tasting the chili. “Why you don’t have the lead in The Nutcracker.”
“Because Clara is a child’s role,” she said, sipping her beer. “I’ve played Giselle, in ballet’s greatest tragedy. You don't go back to dancing with toys after that.”
“Okay,” Eliot said, adding more green pepper to the chili. “This has been bugging me, I saw Giselle, I saw Coppelia, hell, I even liked Don Quixote, but what makes Swan Lake so special? It’s about a damn bird, for crying out loud.”
“Bite your tongue,” Katrina slapped his arm.
“Not appropriate,” Eliot pointed the wooden spoon at her. “No violence in the kitchen.”
Katrina let her head hang down. “I apologize.”
Eliot passed her a bowl of chili and waved her on as they rounded the corner to settle on the couch. She handed him a beer and put a greedy spoonful to her mouth.
“The Swan Queen,” Katrina said between bites. “Is fantasy, magical. You think that makes her absurd, but it doesn’t. Her love for the prince is doomed from the start, they come from two different worlds, and the sorrow that it brings makes her noble. Pity-the universal human emotion.”
Coming back to himself as Katrina scrambled across the hardwood floor, Eliot thought and didn’t think. Her knees were bad, he caught one under his arm, used it to leverage her on top of him. Pinned her neck in the crook of his elbow. She thrashed madly and with one swift crack went still in his arms.
Eliot took a ragged breath, and let her body roll away. They were both covered in his blood; it had been a long time since he had shed so much. He felt tired and closed his eyes.
Eliot woke in a bed with paper sheets. There was classical music playing softly. He tried to sit up, but found himself too dazed by drugs and encumbered by wires and tubes. As reason returned to him, the tube down his throat and the air it forced into his lungs became increasingly uncomfortable. He strained against the wires in his arms.
“The doctors pulled two bullets out of you.” Moreau’s voice invaded the quite with agonizing self-assurance.
“No need to worry though, only the best work for me.” The volume of the music increased. “I love Schubert. You know the funny thing is, the bullets they pulled out of you, came from your own gun.”
Moreau rambled on, the ambient sound of the strings was frenzied and feverish, but Eliot still could not find the mental fortitude to open his eyes.
“I can’t imagine how a little ballerina managed to disarm the great Eliot Spencer,” a machine beeped somewhere above his head. “You don’t get to fall on your sword. Not now that things are just getting interesting.”
The drugs were beginning to take effect. Schubert played on the radio in the corner as the morphine induced fog closed in around him. Eliot slept and dreamt of swans.
End Notes:Inspired by…
Click to viewEdit: My complete writing playlist, if you have a care or are familiar with any of the music; aren't I silly?
“Keepsake” by State Radio
“If I Go, I’m Going” by Gregory Alan Isakov
“Coppelia, Act III: Danse de fete” (Swanhilda’s variation) composed by Leo Delibes
“Swan Lake, Act II: Scene” composed by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
“Set Fire to the Third Bar” by Snow Patrol and Martha Wainwright
“Death and the Maiden: I. Allegro” by Franz Schubert (Featured above. Allegro…ha ha, right.)
“Collide (Acoustic Version)” by Howie Day
“I Will Follow You Into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie
“Pavane for a Dead Princess” composed by Maurice Ravel