I spoke in Russian, low enough that it wouldn’t carry.
“Find the auctioneer. Find her lot. Find out who Kask paid.”
Lev’s face went still.
He didn’t ask which woman.
He didn’t ask why.
“I understand,” he said.
“If the auctioneer promised her to Kask, I want proof before the doors open tomorrow.”
“I’ll find him.”
“Do it without drawing Kask eyes.”
Lev glanced toward Gennady. “And Kask?”
“Gennady can keep smiling for as long as it serves me.”
He left through the side of the dining room at an easy pace. He looked like a man stepping away to handle a call. The scarred Kask soldier watched him go, shifted his weight once, and stayed where he was.
Gennady returned to the bar and lifted his drink as if nothing in the world had shifted under his feet.
I remained standing for a moment.
Nadia came out from the service station with a fresh tray. For the first time that night, her attention moved across our booth.
She gave me one glance, and it was enough. Her dark eyes were tired, wary, and alive with a fire Gennady had mistaken for something he could cup in his hands and smother.
She looked away before I could become one more man making her shift heavier.
I sat back down in the booth with the cracked glass in front of me.
By tomorrow night, I would know the auctioneer’s name, Nadia’s lot, and exactly who Kask had paid.
Gennady could walk into that room believing she was already his.
He would leave understanding she was not.
Chapter Three
The address led me to a building with a doorman who looked at my cheap black coat the way men at The Samovar Room looked at tap water.
I stood under the canopy with cold air biting through my tights, one hand wrapped around the strap of my bag and the other around my phone. The screen showed the last message from the number Tamar had given me.
ARRIVE AT 9:40. USE EAST ENTRANCE. GIVE CONFIRMATION CODE ONLY. DO NOT BE LATE.
No name. No explanation. No promise that I could turn around, go back to Brooklyn, and find another way before Gennady’s three days ran out.
Across the street, a black town car slid to the curb in front of a restaurant with candlelight glowing behind tall windows. The back door opened, and a man in a dark suit stepped out with a woman on his arm. She wore a silver dress under a white fur jacket, her blond hair glossy against the white fur. She laughed at something he said, light and easy, and he bent his head toward her like the whole cold city had narrowed to the sound.
My fingers tightened around my phone.
Manhattan rose around me in glass and gold. Office windows burned against the late-autumn dark. Wind dragged dry leaves along the gutter and lifted the hair at my temples. I had washed and pinned it twice before leaving the apartment, but the train ride had pulled pieces free. My lipstick was the drugstore red I used at work because it made my mouth look steadier than I felt.
The east entrance sat half-hidden beyond a row of planters and black iron railings. No sign. No line. Just a brass-handled door, a security camera above it, and a man built like he’d been poured into his suit and left there to harden.
