I turn, and the world stops.
For one impossible second, I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing.
He’s standing just inside the dining room entrance, broad shoulders filling the doorway, black tuxedo molded over a body no man his age has any right to still possess. Silver at his temples. Dark hair brushed back from a severe face I know with a violence that nearly knocks the air out of me.
God.
It’s him. The man from the plane.
The stranger with the rough voice and the older hands and the mouth I still feel in feverish flashes when I wake up at three in the morning, hot and aching and furious with myself for remembering. The man who steadied me through turbulence and then ruined me so thoroughly I’ve spent seven months trying not to think about him at all.
He looks even more devastating than I remember.
And he’s looking straight at me.
4
VIKTOR
Seven Months Ago
The airport loungeis all muted light and money. Dark leather, smoked glass, low voices kept carefully polite. I sit near the window with Yuri across from me, a cut-crystal glass untouched at my elbow, and try not to think about the three months I have just wasted.
We were supposed to close a shipping agreement in Piraeus by last night. Two cargo lines, three shell companies, and a discreet route for moving weapons through the Balkans without anyone asking questions that would become inconvenient later. Clean on paper. Profitable in practice. The Greeks wanted my protection, my ports, my men keeping customs inspectors blind and rival crews nervous. In return, I wanted the route, the percentages, and their silence.
Simple. Until one of them got nervous.
Nervous men are the ruin of good business. They sweat, they stall, they start talking about caution and timing and exposurelike those words can save them from the fact that they’ve already come too close to me to back away safely.
It’s a waste of my time, and I don’t forgive that easily.
I rub my thumb over the inside of my arm, more out of habit than pain. The wound is healing, but not quietly. A week ago, someone decided to test his luck and almost managed to put a bullet through me. He missed. Barely. The graze is hidden under a bandage and a dark sweater, but every so often it reminds me it’s there.
Yuri notices the movement, of course. He notices everything.
“You should have canceled the trip,” he says, once we’re seated.
I look at him over the rim of my glass. “And reward incompetence?”
He snorts. “I was talking about your arm.”
“My arm will survive.”
“That’s not the point.”
I don’t answer. The lounge is quiet, expensive, full of people pretending not to look at me while very obviously looking at me. I’ve long since gotten used to that. Men assess. Women stare and then pretend they didn’t. It’s the usual dance.
Yuri drinks his coffee and watches me with the same tired patience he’s had for years.
“You’re in a worse mood than usual,” he says.
“The deal collapsed.”
“It was weak.”
“The men were weak.”
He gives me a look that says there isn’t much difference. “I’ve got news from my sources that Voronin was the reason the men got spooked.”
