I walk without further comment.
The passage runs along what must be the outer edge of the building, and it goes on long enough that I stop counting steps and start cataloging every turn, trying to build a map I can use later if I need to. When it finally ends, we are outside, on the south side of the building, a completely different street from the one the club's entrance faces, the sound of police sirens carrying clearly from the other side of the block.
I breathe in the cold air and feel, briefly, like I might actually survive this evening. A car is parked at the curb. Black, clean, expensive. He moves toward it, the lights blipping to life with the press of his hand against the door handle as he opens the passenger door.
"Get in," he says. "I'll take you home."
"You don't know where I live."
He looks at me, a look that is all command, and no retreat.
"I'm not getting in your car," I argue.
"It's the quickest?—"
"I appreciate what you did in there." I mean it, and I need him to know I mean it before I say the next part. "Genuinely. But I am not getting in your car and I am not telling you where I live and I am not?—"
I pause dramatically, looking over his shoulder, at something invisible, watching his attention shift, very abruptly, his head turning on a swivel, eyes moving to a point above and behind his left shoulder. It is the oldest misdirection in existence, I know it, but I’m relieved when he falls for it nonetheless.
By the time he’s turned back, I've already taken three steps sideways. I turn those three steps into a dead run.
Six blocks. I know this route, I've taken this bus a hundred times, I know every turn between this street and my building, and I run all of them without stopping, without looking back to see if he's following. He's not following. Something in me already knows he's not following, and that is almost worse than if he were, because a man who doesn't chase you when you run is a man who already knows he doesn't have to.
I hit my building door with enough force to bounce off it slightly, even as it opens. Skipping the elevator and taking the stairs at a steady pace. My keys are in my hand, and I'm in the door with every lock secure behind me, leaning against the door in the dark before I finally collapse to catch my breath.
The building is asleep. Down the hall, Evie is in her room behind her locked door, safe, exactly where I left her. And I’m home, wearing a stranger's jacket, with blood staining my shirt, and my hands shaking uncontrollably.
I push off the door, heading to the bathroom, running the water cold, and holding my hands under it until they stop shaking. I stare at my face in the mirror, and I look like someone who has had a hell of a night, which is accurate.
Staring at my reflection, thinking about everything I just witnessed, and Evie asleep in the next room, and everything I have built since we came here, about the promise I made her, and everything that I am not going to lose. Not to Pavel, and whatever threat might have come next. And not, I tell myself firmly, to a Victor Rozovsky with his blue eyes and intoxicating scent.
I take the jacket off, but I don't throw it away; instead, I stuff it in the back of the towel cabinet. I tell myself I’ll deal with it later.
Chapter Three
Victor
The penthouse is quiet in the way that expensive things are quiet — not the absence of sound but the presence of sterility. Forty-two floors up, the city becomes something you look at rather than something that you are a part of, all light and distance, and I've always preferred it that way. Down on the street, Chicago does what Chicago does at four in the morning — it keeps moving, keeps breathing, indifferent to what happened an hour ago in a nightclub on the north end of Wicker Park. The city has seen worse.
So have I.
Maksim is in the hallway outside the door. I can hear him shifting his weight on his booted feet when I move through the entryway, the small unconscious adjustments of a man who has been standing still for too long. Another of my men is posted downstairs at the building entrance — Dmitri and a newer one, Yuri, who is still proving himself. Standard configuration for a night that has gone sideways, David arranged the increase in security without being asked before I'd even finished my phonecalls when I’d left the club, because that's what David does. He thinks three steps ahead, and he does it quietly, and he never makes me thank him for it, which is why he's been at my side for fifteen years.
He's at the kitchen island now with his laptop open, and a coffee going cold at his elbow, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, already deep in whatever thread he's been pulling at since he got back. He looks up when I come in. Doesn't speak, just waits, because he knows I'll start when I'm ready and not before.
I pour two fingers of scotch and set the glass on the counter across from him. For a long moment, I just look at it, the energy it takes to bring it to my mouth almost too much to comprehend for my tired mind.
"Talk," I say.
"All the police know is the basic facts," he begins. "Your uncle’s name, age, and that he was the senior advisor to the Rozovsky trust board for the last twelve years." He pauses. "Pavel shot him twice. Both shots center mass. The man didn't suffer."
"Pavel shot him before I arrived."
"By approximately two minutes, yes."
I continue staring at the scotch.
"We had a meeting scheduled. Mikhail and I, with the board. Next Tuesday. To review the evidence Pavel brought to me and determine the appropriate response." I move to the window. The city does its patient, indifferent thing forty-two floors below, all light and motion and complete disregard. "Pavel was the one who requested that meeting. He wanted to handle it through the proper channels, said he didn't want to act without board awareness." I turn from the window. "So why did they meet at Onyx tonight? Why then go to my club and shoot the man minutes before I walk through the door, with a cleaning crew still working the floor below."
