Guilt. I’ve never been particularly good at guilt. Guilt is a professional hazard, one might say of my work. I do a number of illegal things, many of which get people killed. I learned to live with that a long time ago.
But this? This is something new.
I have never willingly put someone I care about into the crosshairs, and even though I know it’s not exactly that, it’s near enough that guilt swims in my veins now.
“Go straight home tonight. Not the long way. Straight there. Close your curtains too. No one needs to look at what’s mine.”
She stares at me for a moment with those steady eyes. Then she almost smirks. “Yes, sir.”
Fuck, she thinks this is a part of our game.
Fine. Let her.
“Good, pet. I’ll know if you don’t.”
That gets me a full smirk. She nods once, then leaves, taking all the air in the room with her.
I turn back to the window. The city offers nothing, as usual. I stand there until the building has mostly emptied and the lights of Manhattan have gone dark and cold against the glass.
Fedor Vinogradov must make a choice. There can be peace in Manhattan. Or he will die.
11
MOLLY
Vet arrivesin the morning with a pink box and the satisfied expression of someone who has executed a plan.
“Maple glazed,” she announces, setting the box on my desk with a small ceremonial flourish. “From the place on Lex. I made the man open early. He was not happy about it, but I was persuasive.” She opens the lid to reveal a dozen donuts arranged with a neatness that suggests Vet may have organized them herself, because Vet organizes everything, including, apparently, pastries.
The smell hits me immediately.
It’s aggressively sweet, thick and warm in a way that usually makes my morning, but today makes my stomach roll in the wrong direction. I press my lips together and breathe through my mouth and stare at the donuts, which I have loved since I came to Manhattan and which are currently my enemy.
“You’re not taking one,” Vet observes.
“I’m not hungry yet.”
She looks at me with those quiet brown eyes, then at the donuts, then back at me, with the unhurried patience of someone running a calculation. “You’re always hungry in the morning. Last Tuesday, you ate two before I had taken off my coat.”
“I had a big breakfast.”
“You got here before me. You didn’t have time for a big breakfast.” She closes the box and sits in the chair across from my desk, and folds her hands. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong. I’m fine. I just don’t want a donut.”
“Molly.”
She says it exactly the way Pavel says it, which is to say in the tone that closes arguments, and I find this deeply unfair and also probably not a coincidence given that they apparently trained in the same school of getting what they want through the precise application of a single word.
I lean back in my chair and look at the ceiling for a moment. “I found out what a vor is. I went down a research rabbit hole at eleven o’clock last night, and I found out what a vor is, and then I found out what a pakhan specifically does, and then I read some things that I can’t unread, and now the smell of maple glaze is making me want to lie down on the floor.”
Vet is quiet for a moment. “What things did you read?”
“Things about how discipline is maintained. In organizations like his.” I look back at her. “Things about what happens to people who betray the pakhan.”
“Ah.” She nods once, without any change in expression, which is somehow both comforting and deeply unsettling. “Yes. That is a real thing that happens.”
“Has it—” I stop. Start again. “Has he?—”
