It gets harder every time.
I pour the first drink before I’ve fully sat down.
Scotch, neat, the good bottle that lives in the bottom drawer and only comes out when something has gone wrong enough to warrant it. My father’s favorite.
He brought it back from Edinburgh seven years ago and told me to save it for the days I couldn’t think straight.
I think he would find this particular occasion deeply ironic.
I drink.
Sit in my chair and drink and stare at the wall and try to locate the version of myself that existed three days ago, the one that was straightforward and functional and did not have a girl in his basement making his hands uncertain.
I want her.
The thought sits in my chest like an ember I can’t stamp out, and I hate it with a thoroughness that would be impressive if it were doing anything useful.
She is Pyotr Sokolova’s daughter. She is leverage and liability and a loose thread that needs cutting and I had my hand around her throat twice tonight and the second time I was thinking about her mouth.
I pour another drink and don’t touch it.
The door opens.
Mike first, then Lyosha filling the frame behind him, then Dmitri somewhere at the back, and I look at all three of them and feel something that might be gratitude in a different life and right now just feels like too many people in a room.
“Get out of the compound,” I say. “All of you. Take the night.”
Silence.
“Razvan.” Mike’s voice is careful. “That’s not a good idea.”
“I didn’t ask for an assessment.”
“Your father just died,” Lyosha says, with the blunt directness of a man who considers dancing around things a personal failing. “This is not the time to be alone in a house with your thoughts. Your thoughts are bad company right now.”
“My thoughts are fine.”
“You’ve been white-knuckling that glass for the last ten minutes,” Dmitri observes from the doorway, entirely unhelpfully. “That’s not what fine looks like.”
I set the glass down. Carefully. “Take the men with you. Leave four on the perimeter, two on the lower level. I want the rest of the compound clear by midnight.” I look at each of them. “That’s not a request.”
Another silence. This one has a different shape, the shape of three men doing the math on whether to push back against something and deciding, individually and at different speeds, that the answer is no.
Lyosha leaves first. He grips my shoulder once on his way out, brief and hard, his version of everything words aren’t built for, and then he’s gone. Dmitri follows with a look that says he has opinions he’s choosing, for once, to keep behind his teeth.
Mike stays.
He stands in the doorway after the other two have gone and looks at me across the office and I look back at him and neither of us says anything for a moment.
“Don’t kill her tonight,” he says.
“Mike.”
“I mean it.” His voice is quiet. Not pleading, Mike doesn’t plead, but close to something. “Whatever you’re feeling right now, whatever tonight is, don’t let it end in that cell. Promise me.”
I say nothing.
He holds my gaze for three more seconds, then nods, once, and leaves.
