1
VALYA
I'm not supposed to drip pizza grease on an illuminated manuscript, but here we are, me and mushroom slices and a leather-bound book of Russian fairy tales, and the page with the firebird has taken a shine in the corner that I will never be able to explain to a conservator. The gargoyles on the exterior cornice do their usual performance of judgment, faces set in the kind of long-suffering disdain that looks very convincing through snow.
Wind throws lace across the windowpanes and the whole of Beacon Hill holds its breath. Inside, the estate glitters the way a cathedral does when someone rich has confused reverence with chandeliers. There are gold trims where there should be plain moldings and antique crosses that have known more gossip than prayer, and a neat little lens in the smoke detector that is not a smoke detector at all.
I lick my thumb, dab at the glittering grease spot, and make it worse. The saints on the icon above my bookshelf lookdown with beautifully painted patience. I raise my slice toward them like a toast.
"Don't judge me. It is mushroom and not even pepperoni. This is practically fasting."
I'm twenty-five, and this room has been mine since I was old enough to understand that doors can be locked from both sides. My suite is at the top of my father's estate, two rooms and a private balcony that collects snow like sugar on a tart, a bathroom tiled in green stone that always looks like it is wet even when it is not, and an adjoining dressing room where fur coats hang beside thrifted sweaters I pretend no one sees. The guards stationed at my door downstairs are selected for their loyalty and their convenient blindness. My driver is a professional who respects schedules. He is also a man who believes that if a young woman ducks out of a moving car near the corner of Columbus Avenue and vanishes into the night, it is probably because she spotted a sale on winter boots.
On the carpet near the door, four labeled cardboard boxes wait in a tidy row like obedient children. One saysCoatsin my neat handwriting and another saysToysand another saysPantry. The last one isBooks. I have sorted them the way only a person who has alphabetized her spices does, and the tape is squared and uncompromising. I keep the ledger for the community program under a stack ofVoguemagazines because no one in this house has ever willingly moved aVogue. This is the part of my life that doesn't fit here, the South End Christmas program that Reza and I run for families who don't attend charity galas because they are too busy holding down two jobs. We are not a registered nonprofit with gala invitations and embossed thank-you notes. We arepeople who want kids to open something that feels like love on Christmas morning. I keep our lists in a small black notebook and in my phone under a code name that would make my grandmother sigh with pride and my father summon three men with guns.
The pizza box is not near the charity boxes. It lives on my coffee table because I'm a responsible adult who cannot be trusted with tomato sauce near wool coats.
I wipe my hands, close the fairy tale book on its silk ribbon, and stand up on the couch to reach the icon shelf, because I'm not tall and I refuse a step stool on principle. The room smells like snow and oregano and the faint lemon of furniture polish. I light a small beeswax taper and whisper the kind of prayer my grandmother taught me when I was six and convinced that God listened most closely to small girls with sincere intentions.Bless the work of our hands. Keep my father safe. Keep me invisible. Forgive the grease.
My wardrobe is a battle that I rarely win. I pull a fur-lined cape over a hoodie and consider myself both designer and disgrace. Sneakers or boots? Boots. Boots say I don't intend to run, although the truth is that I have been running in place for years. I tug my braid over my shoulder, check my mouth for sauce, and practice a smile that reads as harmless. I'm very good at harmless. People assume harmless will not overthrow their plans.
I carry the flat of books to the door, their weight significant. There is something beautiful about hardback spines, the way they declare themselves with a straight line, as if they are sure of what they contain. I press the elevator call button with my elbow and hum a line of a carol under my breath because all the streaming services have insisted it is alreadyChristmas even though it is only advent, which is the season for thinking instead of celebrating.
The elevator doors open with their usual sigh.
The man inside is not a guard and not a servant and not a guest. He is not anyone who belongs here. The first thing that happens is not thought. It is recognition, the body knowing danger the way a deer does when the forest goes quiet.
Dmitri Volkov stands with his hands loose at his sides, a black coat open to a dark suit that looks like it understands violence. He is taller than the threshold wants him to be, lean in the precise way of someone who can move without sound, and his eyes are iron pale under lashes that would be pretty on a woman and are alarming on a man who doesn't smile. His hair is close cut and not soft. A thin white scar bisects his eyebrow. There is a shadow of ink near the open collar of his shirt, the suggestion of a cross or a line of words that disappears under fabric, and my mind does a very impractical thing. It wonders how far the ink goes.
The elevator thinks we are both entering and chimes again in confusion.
"Good evening," he says, in Russian first and then in English, and both versions are low and exact. There is no attempt at charm. His voice sounds like it could be kind if it ever had permission. It doesn't have permission now.
I could step back. I don't. I step in, and the box in my arms tilts, a paperback slides, andAnnaKareninain an unfortunate translation drops to the elevator floor with a slap. He bends before I can, quick as a hawk, and his fingers close around the book. They are steady. There is a faint scrape ofdark ink on his wrist when his cuff rides up. It is something that is not a bracelet and not a watch and tells a story I don't know with characters that look like old church script. He hands the book back to me and our fingers don't touch, whichshouldbe a relief and is not.
"Thank you," I say, English because I'm less likely to blush in English, and then my mouth betrays me. "The old woman throws herself under the train because men are cowards."
He looks at the cover for a heartbeat and then at me. "Some men," he says with an infuriating shrug that makes him look goddamned sexy.
There is a pause in which every neuron in my brain opens small curtains to look out. I could be polite and silent. Instead, I decide to lean into the part of me that is not polished. I tip the box up against my hip and offer him a wobbly smile.
"You are here for my father," I say.
He studies me the way people study paintings when they are trying to decide whether they are looking at a masterpiece or a forgery. "Yes. There is business I must discuss with him."
Everyone in this house knows what business Dmitri has with Father. The men who shadow me in hallways know his footsteps by sound. He is my father's right hand, which is a quaint way of describing a weapon. He has the reputation of the most powerful and underrated sword in battle.
I should sayit is nice to see you this evening, Mr. Volkov, and then stare at the elevator numbers. I shouldn't look at theline of his throat or the place where the ink disappears under his shirt. I shouldn't be a person who is curious.
"Well, I suppose I'm in a bit of trouble with him," I say, because I'm also a woman who understands titles and their use. "You know that."
Something almost like humor touches his mouth. "I know that."
I cannot stop my eyes from flicking to his wrist again. The ink is a small confession. He follows my glance because he is a hunter, and then he lifts his cuff just a fraction in the way a man might adjust his sleeve. The edge of something dark and ancient curves along the bone. I try to keep my voice even and fail.
"Is that Old Church Slavonic?" I ask, which is the most embarrassing sentence I have ever offered a stranger in an elevator. "On your wrist."
He could choose threat. He chooses truth. "Yes."
