Kill Order Kiss novel · Chapter 8 of 16
Chapter 8: Under the Counter
I landed at JFK on Tuesday night as Lucía Vidal.
Nobody looked at me twice.
In the airport bathroom I cut my hair to my jaw with kitchen scissors.
I dyed it black in the sink of a motel in Jamaica, Queens.
I bought a pair of glasses with plain lenses from a drugstore.
When I looked in the mirror, a stranger with my mother's mouth looked back.
Paloma opened her apartment door on Wednesday morning in a bathrobe.
She stared at me for three full seconds.
Then she grabbed me by the jacket, pulled me inside, and hugged me so hard my glasses fell off.
"Your hair," she said into my shoulder. "What did you do to your hair?"
"I died. I needed a new look."
She laughed, and then she cried, and then she hit my arm.
"You promised him you'd stay dead."
"I didn't promise. He asked."
"Mari."
"The floor comes up on Saturday. If Carmine finds that tin first, whatever my father left is gone."
"And if Carmine finds you first?"
"Then you get to give another speech."
She didn't laugh at that.
She made me eggs, and I ate them standing up at her counter.
"Who has keys to the restaurant now?" I asked.
"Greco's people changed the locks." She went to a drawer and came back with a single brass key. "But nobody changed the lock on the cellar door in the alley. Because nobody knows about it but us."
I kissed her on the forehead.
That night was cold and wet.
Van Brunt Street was empty except for a man walking a dog.
My blue awning was gone.
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