“It will be dangerous,” he says softly.
I’m surprised it’s not an outrightno.The situation must be more life-threatening than it seems. “It’s already dangerous.”
He nods. He seems to know already, as I do, that us working together is our best option. The most dangerous. The most difficult. But the best. “My father wouldn’t like it.”
“Fuck your father.”
A smile touches the corner of his mouth. “He thinks you’re going to convert me. Turn me into a mafia-hating family traitor. A soft man with no blood on his hands.”
The words sting—a clear jab at my own departure. But in a way, they’re empowering. Nikolai’s father thinks I have that much sway over his son? He thinks his son is susceptible to that kind of conversion?
Does that mean the sweet, passionate boy I once knew is still surviving inside of the cold, dangerous man before me?
I see it suddenly: a gleaming, perfect future. One where Nikolai and I kill Lebedev, find Maya, free my father, and find a way to become friends again. Close as we once were.
No—closer.
The last week has been clouded with bleak hopelessness and defeat and resignation. I’ve let myself be buoyed by the warring currents of my father’s betrayal and Anton Sokolov’s hunger for blood. But suddenly the control is back in my hands.
And I am not going to let it go.
“I’m not going to convert you,” I say softly, smiling though I’m not sure I mean the words. I only know they’re the ones Nik needs to hear right now. “But I am going to help you. Hell, maybe at the end of this, your father will be so impressed he’ll let us get a divorce.”
Nikolai’s eyes go stormy. For a second I think I’ve offended him, totally mis-stepped—but the shadow leaves his expression so fast it leaves me wondering if I imagined it. He simply nods. “Maybe.”
“So, you’ll let me help?”
He smiles, the faintest, softest, sweetest thing. “Like the old days.” He offers me his hand, and I take it. The first and most tentative of peace offerings.
“Like the old days.”
* * *
“We can’t be long.” Nik navigates the city highways with deft sureness. It almost does feel like the old days—him and me and Maya speeding up and down country roads and city backstreets, the windows down and music too loud. I feel an ache below my breastbone and look into the Beemer’s backseat, half-expecting to find her there. “My dad’s got eyes on us.”
I study Nik. He wears a snug, high-collared long-sleeved shirt that leaves very little to the imagination. While his gaze is fixed on the road, I let mine explore him, searching for remnants of the boy he was when we were kids.
But age has transmuted him utterly. He’s mouthwatering. I realize, like a slug to the gut, that the guys I’ve been dating the last few years—a steady, too-easy, almost boring promenade of the same liberal fuckboy archetype—are Nik’s total antithesis. My face burns. What might have been subconscious suddenly feels glaring.
Was I trying to ignore what I really wanted? What, all that time, I was missing?
“You’re staring.”
I jolt, looking stubbornly forward. I don’t have to look back at him to know he’s smiling. I can feel it. Hastily, I change the subject. “Tell me about Maya.”
The mood goes dour. Late afternoon sunlight streams through the windows, funneled between the gleaming high-rises and stout brick walk-ups of downtown. “Not much to tell.”
“I haven’t spoken to her in five years. Whatever you know, it’s more than I do.”
Nik hesitates. Behind his black sunglasses, his eyes are shadowed with something I can’t name. “Her dad had her in line to take over. His shit, I mean. Not the whole thing. That…”
“Will be you.” Nik’s dad has always been the heart of this operation. My dad and Maya’s were his right and left hands, the three of them inseparable since they were children growing up in the streets. Until my dad started, apparently, funneling information to Lebedev. “So, what? She wasn’t up to it? That doesn’t sound like her.”
Nik turns off the highway, plunging us into the heart of the city. A pang of longing and sadness goes through me at the sight of the gallery. Marina, one of the owners, is inside. What did Anton’s men tell them? That I quit? That I’d left town? That I was dead? I sink a little lower in my seat.
“You know Maya. She was up to it,” Nik says. “But she wanted to do it her way.”
“Nik.” I face him as we pull up to my building. “Seriously. Is she… I mean, do you think she’s…?”
