Alexei's eyes track me as I cross the room. Calculating distance, speed, chance. The narrowing set of outcomes available to a man who took money from the wrong side.
"I want to know what Viktor told you about me. About my personal life, the resources I've allocated, the woman in my house. Every word, Alexei. Every conversation, every meeting, every phone call. And I want it now, because whatever patience I had, I ran out of it watching you sweat."
My phone rings.
The vibration pattern is the one I've assigned to Dr. Mehta's clinic. I pull it out and answer.
"Mr. Zhirinovsky." Dr Mehta's voice is tight. Controlled the way medical staff are controlled when the situation demands it. "Sadie didn't arrive for her shift. She was due at eight, she's not here, and she hasn't called in."
The room shrinks.
The desk. The folder. Alexei in his chair. All of it pulls inward until there's only the phone against my ear and the sound of my own blood.
“Her bag was outside the staff entrance, it has her medication in. One of my staff members found it when she went outside for a break. She isn’t answering her phone.”
"Thank you, Dr. Mehta. I’ll handle it."
I hang up.
"Where is Lev?" My voice is level. I hear it from outside myself, the way I hear it in meetings and negotiations and the handful of moments in my life when the thing happening is too large to be inside of.
Dmitri is already pulling his phone from his pocket. He doesn't need to be told what this is. He's lived beside me long enough to recognize the particular frequency of silence that precedes violence.
He dials. Speaker. Two rings.
"Boss."
"Lev." Dmitri's voice is flat. "Sadie. This morning. Walk me through it."
"I dropped her at the clinic. Eight o'clock, give or take. Pulled up to the front, she got out, I left."
"Did you watch her go inside?"
A pause. One second too long. A man realizing he made an error he cannot undo.
"I saw her get out of the car," Lev says. "She was walking toward the entrance."
"Did you watch her go inside, Lev?" Same tone. Same volume. The repetition is the threat.
"No. I pulled away. She was ten steps from the door."
I take the phone from Dmitri's hand.
"Lev." I keep my voice low. The low is what does the work. "Did you see anything suspicious around the clinic?"
"Pakhan, I—"
"Anything at all?" I demand, louder this time.
"No." His voice has changed. "No, I didn't."
I hand the phone back to Dmitri.
Something moves through me that I don't have a word for in any language I speak. It starts in my stomach, cold, rises through my chest, settles behind my eyes. When it gets there, the world sharpens to a clarity that is almost beautiful in how dangerous it is.
I turn to Alexei.
He saw the call. He heard Dmitri's questions. His face has gone the color of wet concrete, because Alexei is not a stupid man. He's a man who made a stupid choice, and the distance between those two things is collapsing.
