“I…uh…yeah.” I was just throwing out the words to be silly, but he has access to horses too. Of course he does. If I asked for the crown jewels, he’d probably have them here by the end of day, allowing for the time difference and length of a flight from London.
Fedor drivesus to Islamorada in an armored SUV that looks ridiculous on a two-lane road flanked by palm trees and bait shops. Adrian sits beside me in the back seat wearing sunglasses and a linen shirt that makes him look like a tourist who happens to have a holstered weapon under his left arm. The gun isn’t visible, but I know it’s there because I watched him put on the shoulder holster while I was tying my shoes, and neither of us commented on it.
The shopping takes two hours. We start at a general goods store where I buy sunscreen, a decent razor, hair ties, and three types of moisturizer that the penthouse bathroom didn’t stock.
Adrian follows me through the aisles without comment, which is more unnerving than if he’d waited in the car. He looks profoundly out of place between shelves of bug spray and beach towels, and every employee in the store tracks him like he might buy the building.
“You don’t need to follow me through a drugstore.”
“I’m not following you. I’m here for protection.” He picks up a bottle of sunscreen and reads the label with genuine interest, then sets it back. “SPF 30 isn’t enough for this latitude. Get the 50.”
I get the 50 because he’s probably right and because the comment is so unexpectedly practical that it surprises me into compliance.
We move to a clothing store on the main strip, and this is where I push back. The first thing he reaches for is a silk blouse on a display near the entrance. I look at the price tag and put it back on the rack. “I don’t need silk to feel dressed.”
He chuckles. “I didn’t say you did.”
“You reached for the most expensive thing on the rack.”
He tilts his head. “I reached for the one that looked like something you’d wear. You wore silk at Echelon every night.”
“Echelon provided a stipend and guidelines for my wardrobe. Outfits worn there were technically a uniform, not my taste.” I pull a cotton blouse off a different rack and hold it up. “This is my taste. Practical and under sixty dollars.”
He looks at the blouse, back at me, and nods once. I can see him recalibrating, adjusting his understanding of who I am outside the context of a nightclub where I wore what I was told to wear. The adjustment interests me because most men in his position would insist on the silk. Adrian notes the information and moves on.
I buy what I need, not what’s available, though there isn’t a huge selection anyway. I choose cotton shirts, two pairs of jeans, a few pairs of shorts, a lightweight jacket, a swimsuit that covers more than it reveals, sandals that work on crushed shell, and sneakers for the dock path. The total comes to under four hundred dollars, which is probably what Adrian spends on a single bottle of whiskey.
We eat lunch at a café overlooking the water. The tables are plastic, the menu is laminated, and the best thing on it is a grouper sandwich that costs fourteen dollars. Adrian orders one without looking at the menu, and I order the same because it actually looks good. We sit across from each other in plastic chairs with the Atlantic behind us, and for twenty minutes, nothing about the situation involves crime, recordings, or homicide detectives.
“Can I ask you something personal?” I dip a fry in tartar sauce.
He sets down his sandwich. “You’ve been asking me personal things since we boarded the plane.”
“This one is different.” I take a breath. “Have you ever thought about leaving? Walking away from all of it and just running the legitimate businesses?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. He picks up his water and drinks, clearly debating how much honesty the question deserves. “Sometimes. The hospitality group generates enough revenue to sustain itself independently. The hotels, the clubs, and the real estate portfolio could operate as a standalone business without the shipping network or the offshore accounts.”
“So you’ve thought about it seriously.”
He nods. “Thinking about it and being able to do it are different things. The legitimate businesses exist because the illegitimate ones funded them. The people who work for me, Viktor included, built their lives around the full operation. Walking away from the criminal side means walking away from the people who depend on it, and some of those people would consider my departure a betrayal.”
I frown and crush the fry between my fingers. “That sounds like a prison with better furniture.”
He looks at me, and nods again, apparently taking no offense. “It is, sometimes.”
“I can’t imagine you living quietly.” I say it before thinking it through. “You carry authority like oxygen. Even standing in a drugstore looking at sunscreen, you looked like you owned the building.”
“Ownership and control aren’t the same thing.” He sets down his water. “I own properties, businesses, and infrastructure. I don’t control the people inside them. That distinction matters to me because my father never understood it, and it destroyed every relationship he had.”
“Including the one with you?”
“Especially the one with me.” He picks up his sandwich and takes a bite, closing the subject with the gesture. I let him close it because the honesty he already gave me is more than I expected.
We eat in silence for a minute before he turns the question back on me. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“If you could choose freely. No Eric, no Karpov, and no Echelon. What would you want?”
