A Robbery

Beta returned to the warehouse and stood before the mirror under the dim lights, meticulously removing every trace of his disguise.

He slowly peeled off the carefully crafted prosthetic skin on his face and tossed the hood into a plastic tub filled with powerful solvent. Then he dropped in the lifelike face mold as well. White foam immediately bubbled up in the tub, accompanied by a harsh hiss, as the props that had once perfectly created Golmingo's identity began to dissolve.

Beta watched them gradually melt into an unrecognizable sludge. From that moment on, the Mexican's identity would vanish from the world forever.

He continued removing the traces of his disguise: taking out the transparent dental appliance that had altered the shape of his face, then carefully cleaning the adhesive residue from his skin with a special solvent. The stubborn, gummy substance came away in strips, like a layer of dead skin. Finally, he put on a hat to cover the hairstyle set in place with hair wax.

Beta took a pair of gloves from his pocket and began wiping down every spot in the warehouse that might have retained fingerprints with disinfectant wipes: the rolling door switch, the light switch, the chair armrests, the cabinet surfaces. Once he had finished, he swept up the dust on the floor and scattered it evenly over those areas, creating the impression that no one had used the place in a long time.

All the materials in the cabinet went into a collection box and were stacked in the Cadillac's trunk. A bomb could have erased all traces more quickly, but it would have made too much noise and gone against his usual low-key approach.

Standing at the warehouse entrance, Beta took one last look around the place he was about to abandon. Soon, it would be auctioned off because of unpaid rent, and the people who loved "storage unit treasures" would descend like vultures and clear out everything, severing any possible leads for good.

He knew that the operation in Paris was about to hit Europe's already overwhelmed security agencies like a bucket of gasoline, setting off an explosion across the continent's security services. When those people went mad trying to track him down, the traces he had erased in advance would do everything possible to protect his identity and keep him safe.

By the time Beta had dealt with the materials in the trunk and driven the Cadillac back to the residential neighborhood, the sky had begun to lighten with the first hint of dawn.

New York had its own rhythm in the early hours of the morning. Early risers were starting their day, while the night owls were still fast asleep.

The wail of sirens cut through the quiet before dawn, clearly audible from three blocks away.

As the Cadillac slowly entered the residential neighborhood, Beta sensed something was wrong.

In front of the distinctive pale-blue house, the wrought-iron gate, which should have been shut tight, stood wide open, and the garage door had been raised as well. More alarming still, the Ford Mustang was gone, and shards of glass that caught the morning light lay scattered across the ground.

Beta pulled the Cadillac over and brought it to a stop. After switching off the engine, he drew the Glock from his waist.

He pushed the door open without a sound, eased it shut behind him, and approached the house with his gun held in both hands. The dew-soaked lawn made no sound beneath his feet. His nerves were taut, magnifying every detail: the lock that had been forced, the crooked curtains, and the faint, unfamiliar scent in the air.

Beta moved silently. The entire house was deathly quiet.

He carefully circled the battered solid-wood display cabinet in the living room. John Wick sat at the foot of the stairs, clutching the lifeless Pit Bull to his chest like a petrified statue, frozen amid the devastation.

Beta slowly lowered his gun.

The wallpaper had been savagely torn from the walls. Paintings hung in a miserable state, their canvases slashed like tattered butterfly wings in the wind, crookedly clinging to their frames.

The glass in a photo frame had been smashed. A bloody footprint on Helen's portrait had its shoe tread covering her gentle smile.

In the living room, the glass coffee table had exploded into jagged shards of all sizes, spilling across the carpet. More fragments had flown farther away, casting tiny, sharp glints of light in the sun.

In the open-plan kitchen, the cookware had been violently overturned, hurled, and smashed flat, strewn across the floor. The stainless-steel pots and pans were twisted out of shape, the cabinet doors stood wide open, and ingredients and seasonings had been spilled and mixed together.

Most jarring of all was the glass dinnerware Helen had treasured. Not a single sparkling cup or bowl had survived. Its shattered remains littered the counter and floor. Only half of one glass bowl remained, tilted in a fold of the deep-pile carpet. Its curved surface reflected the ceiling like an eye.

The Häagen-Dazs ice cream left over from yesterday had been trampled and splattered everywhere. Its milky-white, viscous mixture of chocolate and vanilla sauce had sprayed outward in all directions, dragging long, half-congealed, nauseating smears across the dark hardwood floor.

Beta's initial shock and disbelief sank into his eyes, replaced by a silence as profound as the deep sea.

He tipped his head slightly back, the muscles in his neck knotting. His gaze rested on the mess of glass shards on the kitchen floor, reflecting the bleak morning light. He examined every fragment, one by one, confirming its shape and size, and the perfect whole they had once formed.

In his eyes, anger churned. It was no weightless flame, but a heavy, viscous liquid silently filling every crevice of his body.

The glass dinnerware had been a gift he'd given Helen. Back then, she had still been healthy, with a smile always on her face. Those dishes had been hers alone.

Vanilla ice cream on summer days; slices of bread fresh from the oven, still hot to the touch; fresh greens coated in salad dressing; and the lovingly baked chiffon cakes Helen had made especially for him, misshapen cakes that always had a little bit of adorable char around the edges...

The flavors, textures, and sounds of those memories were now being cruelly cut apart and crushed by the sharp shards.

Beta walked over to the half of the glass bowl.

As he bent down, his back remained straight. When his fingers touched the cold, smooth curve, his face showed neither grief nor anger, only an absolute, vacuum-like blankness. All his emotions had poured into the roiling, viscous feeling on the verge of breaking through.

Beta straightened and slowly lifted the remaining half of the glass bowl, aiming it toward the morning light streaming through the window.

Sunlight passed through the crystal-clear glass, refracting into hazy colors that danced across his face.

He stared without moving as the broken prism turned in his fingers. In the silence that stretched for more than ten seconds, the refracted light flickered in his pupils, reilluminating the warm memories that had been crushed.

At last, a stifled sneer forced its way out through his nose. "Heh!"