Dmitri’s hands drop from my shoulder. “Define ‘handle it.’”
“I’ll figure that out when the time comes.”
My brother eyes me for a long moment. Then he nods once, quickly and decisively. “All right. But Sasha? Be careful. Men like Tony Haugh are dangerous precisely because they know how to make you forget they’re dangerous.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Dmitri walks back to his desk and sits down. “At the wedding, you looked at him the same way you looked at that art collection in London. Like you wanted to study every detail until you understood what you saw.”
Heat creeps up my neck. “I was trying to figure out if he was a threat.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” Dmitri opens his laptop and starts typing. The dismissal is clear. “I’ll have someone reach out to Tony tomorrow with our offer, then you’ll meet with him to discuss the arrangement in more detail.”
I huff out a breath and turn to leave, but Dmitri’s voice stops me at the door.
“Sasha? When you figure out what Tony Haugh wants, you tell me right away. Not after you’ve decided how to handle it yourself.”
I look back at my brother. He’s watching me with something I can’t quite read. Concern, maybe. Or warning.
“I will,” I promise.
It’s only partially a lie.
4
Tony
Adrian calls at six in the morning, which means he’s pissed.
“You idiot,” he snarls before I even say hello. “Why did I just get a phone call from one of my men telling me you interfered?”
I’m barely awake, still in bed at the hotel with yesterday’s clothes in a heap on the floor. My head pounds from the vodka and lack of sleep. I sit up and scrub a hand over my face.
“Good morning to you, too.”
“Don’t be cute. The gallery attack. You took down three of my men.”
His men. The confirmation lands like a gut punch, and suddenly, I’m wide awake. “You orchestrated that?”
“Of course, I did. I needed to test their security response and make her feel vulnerable.” The way he says “her” makes my skin crawl. Too much emphasis. Too much ownership. “Instead, you played hero and blew your cover in the process.”
I swing my legs out of bed and stand, needing to move. “My cover is fine.”
“Really? From what I hear, Sasha Kozlov knows you’re not a journalist.”
“She suspects. She doesn’t know.”
“She’s smart enough to figure it out.” He sounds like he’s hyperventilating through the phone. “This is the kind of complication I’m paying you to avoid.”
I walk to the window and look out at Moscow waking up below. Gray sky. Gray buildings. Everything in this city looks cold. “You didn’t tell me you were planning an attack on a location she’d be at.”
“I don’t need to tell you my methods.”
“You do if they involve putting her in danger.”
The words come out harsher than I intend, and Adrian catches it immediately. His laugh is raspy and humorless. “Careful, Tony. You’re starting to sound personally invested.”
“I’m invested in not having my target get killed before I gather the intelligence you’re paying for.”
