It is a scrape and a grunt and then a silence that gathers itself around something that has just fallen. I step through the arch. The room offers the picture without commentary. A man lies stretched on the carpet near the hearth. His face is broken at the temple, one eye sealed shut by swelling, mouth slack in benediction. His hands are bound with wire, tight and deliberate, blood drying at the knots.
My father stands by the mantel, holding a glass untouched and never meant to be. The slow turn of his head is both a greeting and a command. Dmitri is nowhere, but his absence presses on the room like a thumbprint.
"What happened?" I ask, voice calm by long habit.
"A traitor," he says, almost gently. "Not your concern."
The man on the carpet exhales, low and wet, a thread of froth and blood catching at his mouth like a secret trying to leave. Iron cuts through polish and candle smoke. My father's jaw tightens once. He holds my eyes until I read what he wants me to understand. I set both palms on the chair back so my hands will not shake. The house calls this order. I call it a wound we dress in linen.
Every time the room turns violent, I see my mother in her bright, separate rooms, safe and aside, while men praise a code that chooses where and when to punish. When my father finally looks away, the air loosens, but the fact remains. I count the stains and the seconds, and I don't forgive the room for learning to watch.
I go upstairs because there is nowhere else to put my body that feels true. My hand finds the banister's curve, worn smooth by a hundred ghosts. A door sighs. Somewhere, a lock clicks softly, like comfort pretending.
My room is too warm. I set down my coat, unbraid my hair, slide the ribbon into the dish where memory sleeps beside earrings. Nothing in this house is ever plain. I stand at the window but don't lean my head. Snow keeps falling steadily. The street tries to stay blank. I touch the cross at my throat. I don't ask for anything. I don't know what to ask for.
I make tea from the tray Yelena left and take it to the chair by the window. Honey and clove rise with the heat. I try to inventory my heart, and it refuses to be itemized. There is warmth from the cafe and the walk. There is caution that pulls the warmth into order before it can spill. There is a thread of anger for the man on the carpet and for the way my father made him a lesson and called it housekeeping. There is a small, foolish happiness because Dmitri listened to fairy tales as if they mattered.
I set the cup down, and it leaves a ring because I forgot the saucer. I wipe it with my thumb. I tell myself I will sleep because sleep is a discipline. The house listens the way a cat does before it is ready to pounce. I close my eyes. I open them again.
My phone lights the room and then settles into a dim glow that still looks louder than the dark. I pick it up because I'm weak and because sometimes, the worst thing to read is better than not reading at all.
A message. Aleksandr.
Are you really marrying him? Tell me it's not true.
9
DMITRI
The cafe's steam is still in my throat when I walk her home through a white, unhurried morning. At her gate, the day is flat and bright, a clean page, but I know too much to trust it. The message sits on my screen like a cut. I see her to the hall anyway, let the porter close the outer door, watch the red of her scarf disappear around the turn, and only then look down again at the line Misha sent from a ghost account.Aleksandr Morozov. Back in Boston. Seen twice near Tremont and once outside the parish that keeps our feast days. A second ping lands, a tight crop from a glass door. A profile, the soft jaw, a face that expects forgiveness. My jaw tightens until it hurts.No entourage. Misha adds a line.A rental.
I stand for a moment with the wool of my coat cold from the street and her warmth still under my palm, the echo of her laugh still in the room. Then I lock the phone and slide it into my inner pocket. At the café, I told her it was nothing, a small matter that did not belong to our table, and I set the screen face down so the glow would die. It would be easy tocall her back and salt the truth with the fact. But it would be wrong. She has earned a night that belongs to her and not to a ghost who once called himself her future.
I take the service stairs. Men in my seat don't advertise when they mean to hunt. Marble keeps the day's footmarks, brass keeps its polish, the house holds steady like a creature that has chosen to live until spring. Order holds, yet small signs gather—a car that lingers one meter too long, a parish door watched from the far curb. That is how a squall begins. Last time, it cost her months.
In my study the lamps are low, the clock counts a clean measure, the wall map shows docks and alleys and the old grid that taught me to read this city like a ledger written in salt. I press the silent call button built into the desk. A latch clicks down the corridor. Three rooms along, Misha steps in coatless, sleeves rolled, jaw set.
"Say it," I tell him.
"Aleksandr," he answers, using the tone he keeps for men who like mirrors. "Polite flight, no record on the ground, cash for a rental beneath his taste, and a walking loop that spells her name if you lay it over the streets. He wants to be seen by her and by us. He is definitely fishing."
"Short-term lease in Back Bay?"
"Yes."
I move a thumb across the edge of the desk until the grain speaks back. "Is he alone?"
"For now," Misha says, dropping the flourish. "New York burnt his bridges. Pride does the rest."
"Who holds his leash?" My fingers tap the table.
"I smell Sergei Vetrov." Misha's voice is flat. "He met a Vetrov runner twice. Same rental."
"His aim."
"Valentina," Misha says.
"He wants the girl," Misha says, clipped.
