The man’s head jerked aside like I’d landed a heavyweight punch.
I slapped the gun out of his hand, juggling it twice before grabbing the grip and flipping the business end around to point at him.
By the time he’d turned back to narrow his eyes at me above his bleeding cheek, I’d backed up three paces, out of his reach. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I bring you message from person you know.”
“Volkov.”Fuck.
He shook his head with a sneer and a sniff like the odor of Volkov’s name offended him. “Demyan Volkov is small-timecrook, trying to break into big business. He does not belong there. And so you don’t marry that ugly daughter of his.”
The ugly crack seemed cruel, but I wasn’t arguing about Volkov. “I’m already married.”
The guy smeared the blood on his cheek and scowled at the red on his hand. “Fuck you. That leave scar on my face.”
“Occupational hazard.”
The guy’s nose crunched up on one side, twisting his lips into a sneer. “At least I have occupation, you fucking leech.”
He wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t going to argue politics with a man who’d held a gun to my head. “Tell your boss, whoever that is, that I’ve already been married in the Russian Orthodox church. I’mmarried.”
Implying permanence.
Even if I was most assuredly lying.
“Make sure you stay married,” the hitman said. “He heard you would not be married anymore, would get annulment and then marry Alina Demyanova.”
Alina,that was Volkov’s daughter’s name. He hadn’t mentioned it a few nights before, as far as I remembered, and now it sounded vaguely familiar, now that I heard it out loud. “How the hell did Vladimir?—”
“We do not say name. The walls have ears, the phones have ears, and the fucking thermostats.”
“How wouldheknow about the annulment?”
The asshole’s smirk had its own superiority complex. “Like I said, everything has ears, if you know how to listen. The world is not as it was in the days of the tsars. You don’t rule it anymore,TsesarevichNicolai.”
“Don’tcall me that.”
“Is what Volkov calls you. And most of your friends.”
“No,it’snot,and they don’t,” I argued.“No onecalls me that,ever.”
“Yes they do, to your face and behind your back. It is much cheaper to watch everyone now than in old days of the Guard Department. Cameras everywhere now, in traffic, in hall and elevator, on every doorbell, and an AI to sort through to find who we want and what is said. Whether you lose dog or heir to Russian empire, is easy to find them. Hack into car computers, know where you are and where you are going. Computer turns off brakes or steering when you are on cliff or bridge. Is no matter. Is easy now.”
“It’shim,isn’t it? I swear to God, I have no quarrel with him and no interest in Russia.”
“You know who my boss is.”
The would-be assassin lumbered to his feet, shoving on the arms of the chair to hoist himself like his back was bad.
Sending a half-disabled hit man after me seemed insulting, somehow, but I had almost died, maybe.
“You keep your business out of Russia,” he grumbled. “We busy enough with ruling the world through puppets with blackmail and threats. If Russian leader sees you so much as sneeze in general direction of St. Petersburg or Moscow, he will send SVR sniper to end you before you know what happens, but we kill that woman first, and make it take time.”
My blood stopped in my veins. Chills traveled over my skin.
The spy started to limp toward the door.
“How did you get up here?” I demanded, still looking over the open sights of the handgun at him, keeping the muzzle post’s white dot securely in the notch of the proximal sight and aimed at his head. “The club is supposed to be secure.”
