· They called me a femme fatale in the media, back when that Jesse Black fiasco went down. Most people have no idea what it really means. Most people think it means badass with tits, but that’s not it at all. A real femme fatale is a villain, and I always thought of myself as a hero. At least I tried to be.
Turned out they were right.
May, 2011.
I found out I was pregnant on my way to kill Vukasin.
I’d been stalking him, online and in real life. I followed him everywhere, obsessively studying his daily habits. Letting him think he was hunting me, when I was really hunting him.
I started fucking his urologist about three weeks ago. Dr. Albert Balian was a sweet guy but utterly clueless when it came to women. Middle aged, unattractive, unhappily married. An easy mark. It was no sweat to convince him how hot it would be for me to dress up like one of his nurses and blow him under the desk in his cluttered office during business hours. At first, he’d been resistant to the idea of me wearing the boring unisex scrubs his real nurses wear and wanted me in some kind of skimpy stripper fantasy getup made out of red and white vinyl. I wore him down, claiming it would be so much sexier for me if I could imagine he was my real boss and that I might lose my job if I didn’t do what he wanted. I’d done it just often enough for the rest of his long-suffering staff to get used to seeing me wearing scrubs around the office, but not enough for him to get bored with the whole idea.
When I stepped onto the elevator that day, I was locked and loaded. Pulse racing as I fought to slow my breathing and steady my hands. I had a capped syringe tucked into the pocket of my borrowed scrub pants, filled with enough potassium chloride to stop an elephant’s heart. I was sweating under my expensive blonde wig. The tunnel vision of my aching hatred made me feel righteous and invincible. Nothing else mattered.
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It was 2:20 pm as I stood alone in the elevator, waiting for the doors to close. Vukasin’s appointment was for 2:30, so I still had time to get in through the back door and meet him in the one place his security goons didn’t follow. He didn’t want any of his men to see that hunk of badly reconstructed meat that dangled between his legs.
That’s my fault, by the way. I didn’t technically do it, but I was the catalyst that made it happen. If you just walked in on the middle of this low-budget action movie that my life has become, all you need to know for now is that he did shit to me and to people I love that I can’t forgive. Not fucking ever. Hence, the mutual vendetta.
The doors on the elevator had started to slide closed when they suddenly bounced back open to admit a pregnant woman with a baby strapped into one of those carrier harnesses that make you look like you have a stunted and partially absorbed Siamese twin growing out of your chest. The woman was flushed and cheerful with the same fluffy, strawberry blond hair as her equally pink-faced baby. She was dressed in roomy, colorful sweats and had a fancy designer diaper bag slung over one shoulder. The baby was wailing and hiccupping in ascending scales like a soprano warming up for a difficult aria.
“Whoo,” the woman said, panting and leaning heavily against the left side of the elevator as she pressed the same glowing button that I had obviously already pressed. “Can’t move so quick anymore.”
I didn’t answer. Just stared straight ahead at the closing doors.
“Is this your first?” she asked, lightly bouncing her fussing baby.
I turned to her with a baffled frown.
“This is my fourth,” she said without waiting for my answer. The baby was starting to gasp and spit like it might blow a head gasket. “A little boy, finally, after three girls! I promise it gets so much easier after the first one. When are you due?”
The baby’s high-pitched wailing was fraying my last nerve and making my fists curl and itch, but that woman’s sweaty pink face was so mild and sweet, completely oblivious to the battle currently raging inside me. I was about to say something cruel to shut her the fuck up but didn’t. I forced a smile that I hoped didn’t seem too condescending.
“I’m not pregnant,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the crying baby and smoothing my scrubs over my admittedly bigger-than-I-might-have-liked belly. “I’m just fat.”
She laughed and shook her head, like we were sharing some wonderful private joke. Her baby was still crying but starting to wind down as she continued with the bouncing and cooing.
“I know, right?” she said. “When my sister-in-law was pregnant with my nephew, she looked like an ad for prenatal yoga, all toned and glowing with this perfect round tummy. Me, I always look like I just escaped from Sea World.”
She rooted around for a second in the outer pocket of the diaper bag, and I figured she was looking for some kind of pacifier or toy to help shut the baby up. Instead, she took out a small packet of tissues and held them out to me.
“They make pads,” she said. “You should get some. At least while you’re still working.”
They make pads. That sentence was so far outside anything I expected from the conversation that for a moment I thought I misheard her.
“Pads?” I repeated, frown deepening.
Again, that light, happy laugh, like there was nothing wrong with the world. Like I wasn’t about to go kill the man who had killed or helped kill pretty much everyone I ever cared about.
“Bra pads,” she said, pressing the packet of tissues into my hand. “I didn’t need them when I was pregnant with Olivia, my oldest. She had the hardest time latching and I ended up having to hire a lactation consultant just to get the taps running, but this time around I’m already a total colostrum fountain, just like you! Anyway, for now you can use these to absorb any excess and hopefully one of your coworkers will have a spare top they can lend you.”
I looked down at my navy-blue scrub top. There were two small, damp blotches on the front, one over each nipple. I couldn’t have been more horrified if I’d just realized I was covered in blood.
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