Leon stands at the doorway to his mansion looking somber. He has gone gray the right way. His hands are steady, and his clothes are perfectly pressed and tailored. I have never seen him look anything other than sharp.
On my approach, he calls out, “Roman, what are you doing here?” He does not offer his hand.
“I have come to ask a favor. Might we speak?”
He nods once, and I follow him inside. His men are wary, and I don’t blame them. But Peter waits in the car, and that seems to put them at ease a fraction.
We sit in his den. The room is small and a fireplace warms the space well. Books line the shelves, and we take to two overstuffed leather chairs.
“It’s been a long time,” he notes.
“Indeed.” Two years? Four, since our last conversation? I’m not sure.
His brow lines with what some might interpret as concern. For Leon, it’s calculation. He’s questioning whether I can still be trusted. “I am sorry about your men in the islands.”
I should not be surprised he knows about Tanner and Marcus, and yet, I am. “Thank you. Unfortunately, it has been an eventful few days.”
“I am sorry to have missed it, but I did not receive an invitation to your wedding.”
I had wondered whether to invited him. “Considering our past, I worried it might bring up old wounds.”
He nods and sighs. “Ah. Fair enough. And where is your new wife? I’d like to meet her.”
“Apologies. She is resting after our travels.” I lay an envelope on the table and turn it so the name faces him. It has his on the outside. “You know Vitaly is coming for me.”
He acts surprised, but it is only an act. “Is he?”
“You have your ear to the wind as much as I do. You knew about my men. Don’t act surprised.”
A slight lift in his shoulders. “You have your corner of our world, and I have mine. I don’t interfere with your family squabbles anymore. It cost me too much the first time.”
“Can’t say I blame you.” I swallow my pride to speak the words that will protect my family. “If Vitaly kills me, you protect my wife and sons. Half of what I own becomes yours if the condition is met.”
He lifts the flap and reads the first page. He does not touch the second. He looks up. “The condition?”
“Vitaly. You kill him. Fast. Clean. You end this, and you keep them alive.”
“And if you live?”
“That is the outcome I am planning around. You’re my plan B.”
He sits back and pauses to stare into the fire. The light deepens the shadowed lines of his face. “Why me?”
“Of all the pakhans in this city, you’re the only one I trust to do right by them. None of us are good men?—”
He laughs once. Sharp. Not a denial. An acknowledgment.
“But you’re the closest thing to a good man that I know.”
“This could have been avoided. If you had married Olga in secret. The way she wanted you to.”
I wish that were true. “She would not have survived our world, Leon. She did not have teeth for that fight. You know it as well as I do. This life was never meant for the kindhearted. The good things she loved about me…they’re as dead as anyone we’ve lost. She would have hated me, hated this life. That hate would have been a slow death for her.”
Leon closes his eyes. For a second his face is hers. Then it is his again as he blows out a large breath. “We are old men now. It is easy to tell ourselves lies about the past for comfort. The thing is, I’m not sure which of us is doing that now. Is it me, thinking she’d still be alive if you’d married her in secret? Or is it you, insisting she wouldn’t have survived that marriage?”
“We will never know. Rewriting the past is an old man’s favorite comforting pastime. But I am not interested in comfort. I am interested in making sure my wife does not face my son alone.”
He breathes out through his nose. “Then don’t let him kill you.”
