“I want Viktor Kozlov,” Igor says, looking directly at me. “Here. Breathing. With my money.” He buttons his jacket with practiced precision. “You have forty-eight hours.”
The room goes still.
“Forty-eight hours?” Lev’s voice is carefully neutral.
“Problem?” Igor asks.
“No problem,” I say before Lev can answer. “Forty-eight hours.”
Igor nods once, then walks out. Timofey follows, but not before leaning close.
“Tick tock, Anton,” he whispers. “Better find him before someone finds you.”
He’s gone before I can respond, leaving me with forty-eight hours to find a ghost who’s probably already dead, while the realthief sits at Igor’s table, planning birthday parties and political dinners.
“????,” I mutter under my breath.
Lev waits until the door’s shut, checks it twice, then shoves his chair back, the scrape of marble loud in the quiet. “I want to take that pretty-boy Patek and ram it so far down his throat he’ll be shitting Swiss parts. Then I’ll use his tie to hang him from that chandelier—right in front of his uncle.” He rolls his shoulders, like he’s already picturing it. “Let him tick-tock his way to hell.”
I don’t respond.
“You know exactly what he’s doing,” Lev says, pacing like a caged dog. “We all do. Bleeding the accounts dry while he plays the loyal little nephew. And Igor? He just sits there, lapping it up like it’s hisbabushka’sborscht.”
I let him move. Better he burns it off here than in front of the wrong audience.
“Forty-eight hours is bullshit.”
“I know.”
“He knows it, too.”
“I know.”
“So what’s the play?”
I stand, buttoning my jacket. “Find Viktor. Or someone close enough to pass for him long enough to keep Igor off my back.”
“Yes, boss.” Lev yawns, stretching like a cat who’s been forced to sit through a board meeting. Then his mouth curves into that smirk I’ve learned to hate. The one that means he’s about to say something I don’t want to hear.
“Speaking of dead…” He examines his nails, casual as hell. “Your Mary made Dima actually talk.A lotyesterday.”
“She’s not myanything.”
“Right.” Lev walks over to Igor’s abandoned cart, finds the Macallan 25. Pours himself three fingers. “You should fuck her.”
I stare at him. “That your professional opinion?”
“That’s my personal one.” He downs the whiskey, and pours another, bigger this time. “When’s the last time you got your dick wet? And I don’t mean from your own hand. I’m talking about actual human contact. With a woman. Who’s breathing.”
“Thanks for the concern.”
He smirks. “Not concern. Observation. You’ve been tracking her, listening to every little grocery aisle laugh—don’t bother denying it. She’s under your skin.”
“She’s not.”
“Right.” He takes a slow sip, like he’s savoring the punchline. “Like you absolutely don’t get that look on your face when you look at her.”
“I don’t have a look.”
