Folks would want to glimpse the end that had befallen a famed director, to see secondhand that even the so-called beautiful people died ugly. Internet sleuths would want to examine all the little details she’d been sure to include in the shots, each a potential clue as to whether Nate had killed himself or was murdered. The picture was the human version of a five-car highway pileup. Who would be able to resist following a link with the headline Nate Walker’s Blood-Soaked Last Scene! It was clickbait on crack.

Oksana took a long drag, pulling the cigarette smoke deep into her lungs. Every puff of nerve-calming nicotine came laced with cancer-causing chemicals, but she didn’t care. Fate had to have other plans for her than an oxygen tank. She’d probably die far earlier from something unexpected, a hit-and-run accident or a fall down the stairs, ignored back pain that proved the early warning sign of something more sinister. What killed you was rarely what you saw coming. It was something you’d missed.

What was she missing? Oksana wondered. Other than the money that should have been fattening her pocket.

The money! That was it! The perennial motive behind so many actions. The newspaper probably hadn’t bought the photos for fear that its advertisers wouldn’t want their products associated with a near-severed head. But there would be other companies that didn’t care about selling ad space alongside articles, firms that charged people to see exactly what they were looking for.

Oksana exhaled the smoke in a long, swirling line and then stubbed the cigarette on the limestone column. She slipped it back into the box in her coat pocket. There was no sense in wasting good tobacco, she thought. But she needed to make the call before her cousin went to sleep.

She connected her cell to the building’s guest Wi-Fi, clicked the WhatsApp icon on her screen, and called up Grygoriy. Three rings later, he answered, his voice thick with fatigue and vodka. He thanked her for calling and asked how she was, both formalities. Their relationship was transactional. They each called the other when something was needed.

“You remember that site you told me about?” Oksana asked, her native language buzzing on the tip of her tongue. “You said they paid in crypto. Explain for me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

IMANI

Imani ducked when the glass shattered. Later, she would wish that her first reaction had been to run for her kids, that she’d performed some heroic act of maternal self-sacrifice as she’d always imagined she would if her family were threatened. But her instinct had, regrettably, been to hide beneath the table at which she’d previously been sitting.

Her second impulse was to scream for Philip.