So if Aleksei thinks he can do something to either of us, he can fucking think again. I’m here to make sure he understands that.
Just as I start to step down from the curb, my phone vibrates in my pocket. I pause, one foot dangling over the asphalt, and pull it out to see a text from her.
ELIANA
Home safe. Are you okay?
I start to type back:Debating whether to do something very fucking dumb.
Then I delete the message and write a different one:I’m sorry.
I delete that one, too.
Finally, I just send:
All’s okay. Get some sleep.
I tuck away my phone and cross the street toward the club.
The building pulses with bass like it’s got a heartbeat of its own. I bypass the front entrance, where partiers in various states of undress and inebriation are queued up waiting to enter, and go down the side alley.
At the far end, a trio of young men in leather jackets stand clustered around a red door flaking with rust. When they hear me approach, they drop their cigarettes one by one and crush them underfoot. Each of them tucks a hand into his jacket, no doubt to grab a weapon.
I hold my own hands up to show they’re empty. “At ease, gentlemen. I’m not here to cause trouble.”
“Then what are you here for?” one of them sneers.
“I’d like to talk to Aleksei.”
They all chuckle in unison, a deep, grating, unpleasant sound. “Aleksei don’t take visitors,” the sneering one says.
“He will.” I nod and clear my throat. “Tell him Semyon is here.”
The name has the intended effect. All three of them go rigid.
“Wait here,” the one in the middle finally says. He disappears through the red door, leaving me alone with the other two.
Neither one speaks. They just stare at me with the kind of slit-eyed hostility you can only learn by growing up in the unlit back alleys of this world.
I know that look intimately. I used to see it in the mirror.
The minutes stretch as we wait. My heart thuds against my ribs, but I keep my breathing steady.Show no weakness—that’s rule number one.
The door opens again. The man who left reappears and summons me forward. “He’ll see you,” he says. “But you leave your phone out here.”
I hand it over without argument.
Then I step through the red door into the belly of the beast.
The hallway stinks. It’s pitch-black and sticky underfoot. My footsteps echo on the worn linoleum as I follow the lieutenant up a narrow staircase. The bass from the club keeps thumping in time with my own heartbeat. Like we’re one and the same. As if I left this place, but it never, ever left me.
At the top of the stairs, there’s another door. The lieutenant knocks twice, pauses, then knocks once more.
The door swings open.
The room beyond is almost as dark as the hallway. Ribbons of cigarette smoke float through the air, wreathing around the heads of the men who sit at the table.
Six or seven pairs of dark eyes flit to me as the door at my back closes and locks.
