***
I stopped hiding in the alcove.
That night, I walked through the front door of The Silver Table like I had every right to be there. Because I did. I'd cleanedthis place more than once—the private dining room after a negotiation went bad, the walk-in freezer after someone talked when they shouldn't have. The Russians owed me discretion and competence.
Now they owed me a table.
I wore the charcoal suit. The one that made me look like money instead of the guy who scrubbed your mistakes off tile grout. Hair pushed back, black hoop catching the light, the easy smile that opened doors and closed suspicions.
Geoffrey materialized like a nervous gnat. "Good evening, sir! Do you have a reservation?"
"No."
"Oh. Well, I'm afraid we're fully booked tonight, but if you'd like to wait at the bar?—"
I looked at him. Didn't smile. Didn't blink. Just looked.
He swallowed. "Let me... let me see what I can do."
Three minutes later, I had a table. Not in the back where the Bratva sat, not in the front where the tourists ate overpriced borscht by the windows where everyone could see them. Right in the middle with a clear sightline to the piano.
To her.
She was already playing. Chopin, something delicate and sad that made rich women dab their eyes with linen napkins. Her fingers moved across the keys with that same precision I'd felt on my skin, mapping me in the dark.
The bruise I'd left on her throat was visible even from here. Dark against pale skin. She'd worn her hair up tonight—deliberately, Iknew her well enough now to know that—so everyone could see it. I couldn't even be mad about it.
Mine.
The thought landed like a fist in my chest.
A waiter appeared at my elbow. "Can I start you with a drink, sir?"
"Vodka. Neat."
He scurried off.
I leaned back in my chair and watched her play. And I let everyone in this room see me watching.
***
Viktor found me during her break.
I'd been expecting it. The back of my neck had been prickling for twenty minutes. That sixth sense you develop when you spend your life in rooms where breathing wrong gets you buried in the desert.
He didn't slide into the chair across from me.
He stood behind me.
Close enough that I could smell the Versace Eros and gun oil. Close enough that his shadow fell across my vodka glass like a threat.
"Milo." His voice was conversational. Pleasant, even. That's how you knew you were fucked. Viktor only got polite before he got violent. "Come walk with me. You're hogging our best table."
It wasn't a request.
I stood and followed him through the kitchen, past the line cooks who suddenly found their prep work fascinating, and into the walk-in freezer.
He closed the door behind us.
