“Then make the wiser choice.”
His mouth twitched. “You’re focused on Kask tonight.”
“I’m focused on the room.”
“Yes,” Lev said. “That’s what I meant.”
I took one sip. The Armagnac burned warm and clean. “Gennady is loud when he thinks no one can touch him.”
“He’s always loud.”
“He’s getting worse.”
Lev glanced at the bar, then back to me. “His uncle has been pressing your father for more room in Brooklyn.”
“My father likes men who press. It gives him an excuse to decide how much pain their pride can afford.”
A server brushed past with a tray of martinis, and the booth beside us burst into laughter over a toast. The noise covered Lev’s answer.
“Your father hasn’t been taking meetings this week,” he said.
“No, he hasn’t.”
“The Kasks notice things like that.”
“They notice what they’re allowed to notice.”
Lev didn’t argue. He knew better than to ask in a crowded room why the doctor had visited the house twice in three days, or why Mikhail Sorin had started receiving men from a chair instead of from behind his desk.
My father was still Pakhan.
The city could keep believing that as long as his hand could close around a pen and his voice could come through a closed door.
At the bar, Gennady laughed at something one of his men said. The sound carried too far. Nadia didn’t turn.
The front door opened again.
A young man came in without giving his coat to the hostess.
He paused just inside the entrance, shoulders high against the cold he’d brought with him. He wore a dark hoodie under a cheap black coat, and the hoodie’s edge was frayed near the zipper. A bruise shadowed one side of his jaw, yellow at the edges and split by a thin red scrape. He had the lean strength of twenty and the kind of pride that made a man stand taller when he should be measuring exits.
He spotted Gennady first, then Nadia.
The tray in Nadia’s hand dipped less than an inch before she steadied it.
“Petya,” she said.
I heard the name because the space between two songs opened just enough to carry it.
The young man’s shoulders tightened at her voice. Color rose along his neck. He looked away from her first, then back at Gennady, as if anger were easier to show than whatever her face had put in him.
Gennady turned from the bar, smiling now.
“Well,” Gennady said, loud enough for nearby tables to hear. “The little debtor found his courage.”
Petya’s hands closed at his sides. He walked toward Gennady with his chin up and a white envelope gripped in one fist.
Nadia moved before he reached the bar.
