“You’re lying badly.”
A sound came out of me. It might have been a laugh if anything about tonight had been funny.
One of his men shut the door, and the outside world dulled at once. The stranger stayed beside me, close enough to catch me, not close enough to pin me. His coat covered my lap and chest. Under it, the pale silk clung to skin that wouldn’t stop shaking.
The SUV moved.
City light slid across the window. Black glass, white headlights, gold windows high above the street. Manhattan kept going as if women weren’t bought and carried out of rooms above restaurants where people laughed over candlelight.
The stranger opened a bottle of water and held it where I could see the seal break.
“Small sip,” he said.
I stared at it.
“If you tell me what to do one more time, I may throw it at your head.”
“After you drink.”
I took the bottle because my mouth was too dry to keep winning that argument. The water hit my stomach cold and sudden. I swallowed once, then twice.
My hands shook so hard the bottle crackled.
He took it before I spilled it on myself.
“What happens to the money?” I asked.
“It will be handled.”
“For Petya?”
“Yes.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
He looked at me in the dark back seat. Blood marked his knuckles. My lipstick had probably smeared. His coat covered me, but I could still feel the silk underneath, the room underneath, Gennady’s eyes underneath everything.
“You don’t,” he said.
My fingers curled against the leather seat.
“Not yet,” he added.
I heard him, but his voice had started to pull away from me.
My vision blurred at the edges again.
Not now. Not in front of him. Not when I still didn’t know where I was going or what he wanted or whether Petya was awake in our apartment with the crooked chain on the door.
The stranger’s voice came from far away. “Nadia.”
I forced my eyes to his. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Say my name like you get to keep it.”
His face sharpened with something I couldn’t hold long enough to understand.
