She gets into the car with her bag and her tablet and then pulls the door shut behind her. She says good morning without looking up from her screen.
“Good morning,” I say.
She opens the day’s schedule on her tablet. “Your nine o’clock moved to nine thirty, the Harmon account. Legal sent over the revised Rezenkov annexure overnight, and I’ve flagged three clauses that need your attention before you sign. And your lunch is confirmed at Per Se, one o’clock.”
“I know about the lunch.”
“I know you know.” She scrolls something. “I’m also sending a reminder to your phone at twelve forty-five because last time you had a one o’clock, you were still on a call at five past.”
I look at her.
She looks at her tablet.
“The Harmon account,” I say.
She pulls up the file and we work through it for the rest of the drive, her voice even and unhurried, mine the same, the city moving past the windows at the speed of midmorning traffic.
At some point she leans across to show me something on her screen and her hair, pinned up the way it always is, catches the light from the window at a particular angle and something moves at the edge of my attention.
I look at the document.
“Here,” she says, her finger on the screen. “This indemnity clause. They’ve softened the language, but the liability window is still wider than you wanted.”
“Tell legal to push back. I want it tightened to thirty days, not sixty.”
“Done.” She makes a note. Leans back and pulls her jacket straight.
I look out the window.
Per Se restaurant has tables that are spaced far enough apart that you can have a conversation nobody else will hear, which is why men like Grigori Volkov choose it.
He is seated when I arrive. Grigori is always already seated. It is a small dominance play he has been running for forty years, and I have never once called him on it because there are hills worth dying on, and restaurant arrival times are not among them.
He stands when he sees me, and we shake hands across the table, and we sit. The server appears immediately because Grigori has also already handled that.
He is sixty-three, heavyset in the way of a man who was once physically powerful and has settled into authority instead, gray at the temples and white at the beard, with the kind of eyes that smile readily and mean very little. He has run the Volkov faction for twenty-two years. He did not do that by being the man his eyes suggest he is.
“Roman.” He lifts his water glass. “You look well.”
“Grigori.” I open my menu. “You look like a man who has something to say.”
He laughs. It is a generous laugh, full and easy, the laugh of a man who finds himself consistently amusing. “Straight to it. I always forget that about you.”
“You never forget anything about anyone. That’s why you’re still sitting where you’re sitting.”
He inclines his head. Takes it as both a compliment and not. The server comes, we order, and when he leaves, Grigori folds his hands on the table and looks at me with eyes that mean something other than what they show.
“The council session is in two months,” he says.
“I’m aware.”
“I want to make sure we are not walking into that room with unresolved business between us. It creates an atmosphere.” He pauses while the server sets down bread. “Mila is in New York until the end of the month. My niece. I would like you to meet her.”
So it is the niece. I had wondered.
“I’ve met Mila,” I say.
“Socially. Briefly. I am suggesting something more considered.” He breaks a piece of bread. “She is thirty-one. She studied law in London. She is not difficult to be around, Roman, I would not insult you with difficult.”
