I couldn't.
If I looked at it, I'd think about her sitting there, and how mesmerizing she looked when she played, the music flowing through her body. The way she tilted her head, chin lifted, hair spilling over bare shoulders. The way her fingers moved over the keys with a tenderness and precision that made my chest ache…
The way she cataloged every conversation in that room, filing voices and secrets and patterns of behavior like a human surveillance system disguised as a helpless, blind woman in a silk dress.
I shook off the thought. The office door was closed, but light spilled onto the floor underneath it. I knocked twice.
"Enter," Viktor said.
Cautiously, I opened the door, half expecting to get jumped or shot.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. Not Viktor's usual cologne. Something else. Something rich, layered, old-world. It was pipe tobacco. The expensive kind, not convenience store garbage, but hand-blended, probably imported.
The second thing I noticed was the utter stillness.
Viktor sat behind the desk that I now knew used to belong to Raven's father. He was leaning back in the leather chair with a glass of vodka in his hand, and for once in his life, he didn't look like the most dangerous man in the room.
That distinction belonged to the man sitting opposite Viktor.
This must be Konstantin.
He was in his late fifties, maybe early sixties. Hard to tell with men like him who aged like old leather, getting tougher and more weathered without ever looking weak. He was wearing an expensive suit, black, cut close enough to suggest a tailor who charged by the hour. No tie. Top button undone. The kind of calculated casualness that saidI don't need to impress you.
He sat perfectly still. Not the fidgeting stillness of a man at rest, but the stillness of a man who was waiting. The way a predator sits when it doesn't need to chase, knowing its prey will wander close enough on its own.
His eyes found mine the second I walked in. They were pale gray, almost silver in the office light. And absolutely fucking empty.
I'd seen empty eyes before. Hell, I saw them every morning in the mirror. But there was no life in these eyes. Only death.
Another one of Viktor's guys was there too. One I'd seen around once or twice. He was standing by the small bar, fingers drumming against the counter in a nervous rhythm he probably didn't realize he was broadcasting. His eyes bounced between Viktor and Konstantin like a dog at a tennis match, trying to figure out which master to please.
"Milo," Viktor said, gesturing to the remaining chair across from the desk. "Sit."
I sat. Crossed one ankle over my knee. Leaned back.
Casual.
Easy.
The mask in place.
"This is my associate, Dmitri," he told me, gesturing to the man standing by the bar. "And this is Konstantin Volkov," Viktor said, indicating the man sitting opposite him. "From Moscow."
"I assumed," I said, with a nod toward the parking lot. "The Bentley's a nice touch. Very subtle."
A flicker in Konstantin's expression. It wasn't quite a smile. More like an acknowledgment that I'd said something he could've found amusing under different circumstances.
"Mr. Scott." He gave me a slight nod. "I have heard a great deal about you."
"All good things, I hope."
"Interesting things." He reached into his jacket and produced a pipe, but he didn't light it. Instead, he just held it, turning it slowly between his fingers like a man handling a rosary. "You have been with Viktor's operation for how long?"
"I don't actually work for Viktor. I'm an independent contractor. Cleaning work. I don't work for any one organization."
"Yet here you are." He set the pipe down on the arm of his chair.
His eyes hadn't left mine. Not once. Not to blink, not to glance at Viktor, not to acknowledge Dmitri's fidgeting at the bar.
