Once, far back
She flinched. First a flash, then a bang... Sound does three hundred forty‑three meters per second. That's how far the car had rolled. Flames, bang in one second, heat to the chest... Bathsheba clung to her with tiny hands.
"Cesara..." — she screamed, watching the upholstery melt inside the cabin...85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDsFSBarQnf
...along with their father.
Cesara stared at the burning car, eyes wide with horror. She felt nothing — just wiping Bathsheba's bloody face with a handkerchief... Only the ray of sunlight, breaking through the clouds, traced the burning car in an oval and drove into her memory like a blade. Somewhere deep in her brain, a pulse: watch and remember, watch and remember...
After that, everything sank into a fog — from which, for the rest of her life, cops' faces would surface, stacks of paperwork under coffee cups on their desks... cramped wooden cribs... a judge in his robes... cribs again... her sister, forever in tears...
And calendars. Lazy, greedy calendars that grudgingly let go of their columns of numbers, endless as a desert — black... red... blue... Cesara hated those columns. They were a fence, a wall between the stifling, dark room of the orphanage and the open lawn bathed in sunlight. When that palisade of numbers finally crumbled, the sisters would start their lives — the ones in which they would find their father's killer.
At eighteen, Cesara confided:85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpnQefLTk2K
"Soon we'll have a lot of money."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwDY7Pilh9J
Her sister looked at her with disbelief:85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiLw7jkxspQ
"From where?"85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD0zPiW38ij
"I don't know. But it'll happen."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW3aApeoB22
A year later, it became clear from where. Bathsheba dropped into a chair:
"What did you say?!"85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIax6pIKfMb
"Yes. I'm marrying him..."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmeRxEohgLA
"He's fifty years older than you! It'll take him another fifty just to get it up."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLOkYDJ3bph
"I won't rush him. Promise." — Cesarahuggedhersister.
And she kept her word — he died before it ever got up. She inherited twenty percent of a nickel company from her late husband's estate. Cesara knew jack about nickel, and six months later, she gladly traded her stake for a safe stuffed with laundered cash.
Life was finally on track, rolling toward the horizon, money pulling in more money. But it didn't bring the sisters any closer to what they were after. Bathsheba, meanwhile, had finished bodyguard training and crossed off the first item on her list. At the graduation party, the instructor pulled Cesara aside:
"I'll be damned if I ever see a hellion like that again!" — he shook his head. "She's got talent. Don't let her bury it."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡObYUu4eqFv
"Swear on our father — I won't."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9tL6XC9OVK
The instructor looked Cesara straight in the eye:85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUUC8SXndQr
"What's with the tooth? The missing one."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPmv5etyblM
"A car exploded nearby when we were kids."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrBZiC4B75S
"Why doesn't she get it fixed?"85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ14ZoO9cC8j
"She will. When she checks off the second item on her list."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxUOpifFh1r
When their father was avenged. Cesara didn't add that.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn4s7T3Lwgm
"I'm afraid I'll be hearing about you two again..." — the instructor shook his head.
And so it happened. The sisters rolled into the West Coast mob union's china shop like a tank.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiHPgsr2z7V
"That's where the roots are," Cesara had decided the night before.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5wS2QD2EPR
"Then why aren't we there yet?" her sister pushed.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfNdvnHYYHU
Eight million and a hundred and forty‑two bodies — that was the investment that got them in the door and carved out their place in the sun. The bodies stayed dead — the millions didn't. Over the next five years, they grew into seventy‑three. Strange thing — no one on the coast ever found out, not even under torture, who'd ordered their father's death.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWDyI9n0WMD
"We're wasting time here," Bathsheba said one day.
"No," Cesara shook her head. "We're waiting for it to tell us."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2veVu8iSNC
Soon, ripples spread across the pond. One Carlos Gwerazzi...85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1hw23tLhFj
Not a common name, but not easy to track down in phone books either. Word of mouth was silent. The Carlos Gwerazzi they needed seemed to have a talent for lying low. A Christmas gift the sisters bought themselves — a lieutenant from the county police — narrowed it down to eight. Still too many.
"Maybe we should try a forecasting agency?" Cesara popped the champagne as the clock struck midnight.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYDlRP7VeLm
"Happy New Year, sis!" Bathsheba raised her glass. "Better yet — a fortune‑teller."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3a5fSx2Jz3
"Done!"85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLtdJG2Vtkh
They hired a detective.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ51Vq41rOPJ
A month later, two Carloses were left. One was busy pissing his pajamas in a nursing home; the other — better known as Pimple — was climbing the ladder on the East Coast. Five hours by air.
85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwz62ND6E7i
On the East Coast, everything had to start from scratch. All they had was the experience they'd gained out West. That didn't sit well with the sisters. Climbing a mountain of corpses to get to Gwerazzi was a thankless job. That's what Bathsheba thought. Cesara added: let him come to us instead.
That month, they opened an art gallery and a high‑end restaurant, wrapping both in an aura of mystery — neither sister was formally listed as an owner. Instead, they put a couple of figures in the shop window whose idiocy was beyond doubt. And since both the gallery and the restaurant became the talk of the town within a year, interest in the mysterious puppeteers grew by the day. Everyone was curious — except the one the sisters were waiting for. A year brought them no closer. Carlos was somewhere nearby; they could feel his breath, but they couldn't reach him. Annoying, but not critical enough to change the whole strategy. Time wasn't pressing.
85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ82JDEDrOzv
But on that sunny morning, on the eve of the Fourth of July, it all seemed to fall apart...85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5V8gfnKkpy
"I don't believe you!" — Cesara's lips trembled. She grabbed a napkin off the table and started fidgeting with it, then dropped it and froze, her gaze lost in the endless blue sky.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLIikh5On6l
"Forgive me!" — Bathsheba covered her face with her hands. "Forgive me..."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4bVk0snJOX
They sat in silence for several minutes.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHlLBWRzRYL
"You know," Bathsheba said, placing her hand on Cesara's, "when close people sit like this — the way we are now — their hearts start beating in sync..."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWfdyk7cmY9
"I know," Cesara nodded. "I don't want it to stop. I couldn't bear it..."
"Don't say that. You have to!.. Please!.. God takes us when there's nothing left for us here... That's not me — we'll finish this together. I promise." Bathsheba sat up in the lounge chair. "We still have time. We do. We'll make it. Until then, I won't give up."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs0zBBylrjU
Cesara turned to her. Through the tears, her sister's face swayed and blurred.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNsgZAakjqb
"Smile," Bathsheba asked.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ89ETKAXoZP
"I can't..."
"You can. As long as it's not over, we smile. No one should know... Come on!"85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡabJdrTpqIO
Cesara gave a sad smile.85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfVpWzsNjZ6
"I love you," Bathsheba leaned back in the lounge chair. "You know what?" — she picked up her oncology file with a grimace and waved it. "Screw what it says."85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaqrMXwOtaK
And in that tone Cesara had admired her whole life, she added:85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4syiZMvCPk
"I found someone who'll clip Carlos."
85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXiiu5Crq52
and then Add to home screen.