“Tell me about him,” I encourage.
“He was Bratva,” Matvei says eventually. “Not that high up. Not low, either. Somewhere in the middle, where you have just enough power to get yourself killed and not quite enough to keep it from happening.”
“What was he like?”
“Strict,” he answers right away. “Not always, though. He could be funny, when he wanted to be. He liked card games. Cheated his ass off, but that’s a lesson, too, I suppose.”
I rest my palm over his heart. It thumps once, hard, like it’s surprised to be noticed.
“Fifteen years ago,” he says, “he and my uncle Afon had something going on the side. A little hustle for extra cash. It was something Lukas, thepakhan, had told them very specifically not to do. They thought they could keep it quiet and hidden from him. But as it turns out, they were wrong.”
“What happened?”
His ribs go very still under my cheek. I can feel him picking through the words.
“They got caught in an alley by suppliers who’d decided they were no longer worth the risk. I was there. I shouldn’t have been—they’d warned me not to follow—but I thought I was old enough to get involved. Fifteen-year-olds know everything, in case you weren’t aware.”
The joke is too bitter for me to laugh at it. Especially when I can already see where this is going. “Oh, Mat.”
“If it weren’t for Afon,” he says, “I’d have gotten killed as gruesomely as my dad did. But Afon dragged me out while my father took on the worst of it.”
I close my eyes and think of a fifteen-year-old boy crouched behind a dumpster, looking when he was told not to look. The same boy who, fifteen years later, would haul a stranger out of an alley because he couldn’t stomach being the one who didn’t intervene.
“Afon was supposed to die, too,” Matvei goes on. “Lukas had every right to execute him. Me, too. Going behind thepakhan’s back—that’s a death sentence. But Afon dropped to his knees and begged. He made a trade. If Lukas spared me, Afon would work for him forever. And Lukas—who is a complicated man, to say the least—took the deal.”
“So Afon’s been working for him ever since.”
Matvei nods. “For fifteen years. Doing whatever he’s asked. Never a no. Never a hesitation.” He swallows. “Because of me.”
The dwindling fire in the grate pops. A coal tumbles down from the top of the pile.
“And so now…?” I prompt.
“Now,” Matvei says slowly, “a new opportunity has popped up. Technically speaking, Lukas released me from the Bratva’s employ fifteen years ago. But Raymond and his friends are doing things that Lukas can’t quite figure out how to counter. So he asked me to take care of it for him. In return, he’d release Afon from his debt. We’dbothbe free. Or at least as free as anyone like us ever gets.” His hand finally stops moving on my stomach and just rests there. “So when I tell you Raymond is going to die,dikarka, it’s not just you I’m trying to save. It’s the uncle who rescued me, too.”
I press my mouth to the scar on his side. He winces, then settles, like something about the kiss soothes him. “Then we’ll do it,” I declare. “For you and your uncle. For your dad. For me. And for our baby.”
He hums a soft sound of agreement.
“I’m sorry I ruined this chance,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Don’t apologize. We aren’t out of chances yet. There’s another window coming up next weekend.”
“The DeMaris wedding.”
“You remembered.”
“I’m an over-preparer in all things. It’s a sickness.”
He chuckles and pulls me closer. “It’ll be more complicated,” he warns. “Josiah DeMaris doesn’t do anything halfway, especially not when it comes to marrying off his daughter. Comes with the territory of being a United States senator, I suppose.”
“How complicated?”
“It’s a serious affair. Black tie. Three hundred guests, press in the lobby. Coat checks, security, Secret Service… It’ll be a fucking mess.”
I tilt my face up so I can see him properly. The fire’s last orange light is catching on the side of his jaw, the column of his throat, that one lock of hair that’s fallen across his forehead and refuses to behave.
In eight months,I think again,maybe we’ll have a chance to try this for real.
