***
The phone rings twenty minutes later. I don't need to check the screen to know who it is.
"Dmitri."
"Brother." His voice is calm, measured. The voice he uses when he's containing something volatile beneath the surface. "I hear you had an eventful evening."
"Word travels fast."
"Word travels instantly when my brother spends five million dollars at an underground auction." A pause. "For a woman."
I don't respond. There's nothing to say that will make this better.
"Bianca Benedetti," Dmitri continues. "Carmine's daughter. The one you were involved with two years ago—the one I told you to walk away from."
"Yes."
"The one you assured me you'd ended things with. Cleanly. Permanently."
"I did end things."
"And yet here we are." I hear him shift, imagine him in his own office, Kira perhaps asleep upstairs, their son in the nursery. The life he built after swearing he'd never let anyone close. "Tell me what happened."
I tell him. The intelligence about the auction, the discovery that Bianca was being sold, my decision to intervene. I leave out the two years of surveillance, the obsessive monitoring of her life, the way I've kept her photo in my desk drawer like a talisman. Some things my brother doesn't need to know.
When I finish, he's quiet for a long moment.
"Sergei Morozov," he says finally.
"Yes."
"You understand what this means."
"I'm beginning to."
"The Morozovs aren't the Ivanovs, Misha. Anatoly was a man of honor, however twisted. We could negotiate with him, find common ground. The Morozovs are different. They're animals. They don't forgive, and they don't forget."
"I know."
"Do you?" His voice sharpens. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you've just painted a target on this family for a woman you barely know."
The words sting, even though he's right to say them.
"I know her," I say quietly. "I know her better than I've known anyone outside this family."
"You knew her for four months, two years ago. People change."
"Not her." I think of the way she grabbed my arm in the foyer, demanding I look at her. Still fighting. Still fierce. "She's exactly who she always was."
Dmitri sighs. It's not an angry sound—more resigned. The sigh of a man who recognizes the symptoms of a disease he's already survived.
"What's your plan?" he asks.
"Secure her. Gather intelligence. Find out what the Morozovs' next move will be."
"And then?"
"Handle it."
