Petya crossed the room and stopped two feet from Nadia as if he didn’t trust himself to touch her.
“Nadia,” he said, rough and low.
She stepped into him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
Petya bent over her, holding on with both hands. He was taller than she was, young and rigid and trying not to shake. For one moment, he looked twenty instead of doomed. A reckless young man who had nearly sold his sister to a monster without understanding the shape of the knife until it was already in her hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said against her hair. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” she said.
“I didn’t know he’d—”
Nadia pulled back and looked up at him. “Don’t finish that sentence by making it about what you didn’t know. You knew enough to lie.”
Petya flinched.
He nodded, jaw tight. “I knew enough.”
Gennady made a soft, amused sound. “Touching. The little debtor confesses.”
Petya turned.
His fists closed.
Nadia caught his sleeve with one hand, just as she had at The Samovar Room.
This time, Petya didn’t try to pull away.
“You don’t get to talk about her,” Petya said.
Gennady smiled. “I talked about her before you understood what your debt was worth.”
Petya took a breath through his nose. His shoulders shook with the effort it cost him not to move.
“It was my debt,” Petya said. “My failure. Mine. You used it to get to her because you’re too weak to stand in front of a woman who told you no.”
The smile slid from Gennady’s face.
Petya looked at Nadia. “I won’t make you carry this for me again.”
Nadia’s eyes shone. “You’re going to spend a long time proving that.”
“I know.”
I looked at Lev.
Lev guided Petya and Nadia back from the center of the room without touching either of them. Nadia didn’t sit. She stood beside the chair with Petya at her shoulder and my men positioned behind them.
The older Kask witness cleared his throat. “Perhaps this can be settled financially.”
Gennady turned on him. “Be quiet.”
The older man’s eyes hardened. “You have put us in a room with Mikhail Sorin, a bribed auctioneer, an altered lot order, an inflated debt, and a demand written like a whore’s invoice. I suggest you speak less.”
Gennady’s face went red. “She was on the block.”
I hit him before the final consonant left his mouth.
