I let myself have two seconds to pull my shit together.Well, I thought,it was nice while it lasted. Then I stood and grabbed my pants from the floor. “Nikita wants us at his office within an hour. Looks like it’s cold showers all around.”
There were too manyfucking cars outside.
I lit a second cigarette and stared out the window at all the cars lining the street outside Nikita's building at two in the morning. The street should've been empty at this hour. Instead, it was packed tight. Six cars were on one side, right up against the fucking building.
"Whatever happens in there, you keep your mouth shut," I told Fin. "You let me do the talking. All of it."
"Aye, ye said." He was looking up at the building through the windshield. "Why'd he want me there? Yer boss. What's he want with me?"
I didn't have an answer, and that was eating at me.
What the fuck did Nikita want with my Fin? Nothing good. I’d known that the moment he told me to bring him. But now that there were six cars in the equation, I couldn’t even begin to guess how this would play out.
And the not knowing was torture.
I popped open the door, dropped my cigarette and stomped on it. Gregori opened his door, but I shook my head. "Just us," I said.
Gregori frowned. "Aleksi—"
"You heard me."
Gregori’s face hardened, and he hesitated. “If you need a witness, boss, you send them for me. I got your back.”
I appreciated the sentiment, but there was no way in hell I was putting a good, loyal man like Gregori in the line of fire to save my own ass.
He got back into the car and stayed there.
Fin climbed out the other side and stood next to me on the sidewalk with his hands shoved into the pockets of his borrowed sweatpants. They were too big on him, and the shirt was too small, creating this odd version of Fin that was almost comical looking. He’d never have been caught dead in such ill-fitting clothes on a normal day.
I wanted to put him back in the car. I wanted to tell Gregori to drive him to the airport, put him on a plane to Scotland, to anywhere that wasn't here. But Nikita had said bring the boy, and I was a lot of fucking things, but insubordinate wasn’t usually one of them.
"C'mere," I said.
"What?"
"Just—" I fixed his collar where it had gone crooked. Stupid thing to do. I did it anyway. "Stay close. You stand where I put you. You don't talk to anyone but me."
He looked at me for a long second. Whatever he saw, it wiped the grin right off him. "Aleksi. Ye're scaring me."
"Good," I said. "Stay scared. It'll keep you quiet."
I started for the door so I wouldn't have to look at his face.
The lobby was all marble and brass, the kind of money that's supposed to make you feel small walking in. Two men I knewstood by the elevators. Two I didn't stood by the door we'd just come through, and they closed it behind us.
"Arms," one of them said.
I lifted my arms. He patted me down, found my piece where he knew it'd be, and took it. I'd given up my gun in this lobby more times than I could count. What wasn't standard was the way he wouldn't look at me while he did it. Kostya. I'd bought the kid a drink at his own father's wake. Now he was taking my weapon and staring at my shirt buttons like they were the most interesting thing in Ohio.
That told me more than the six cars had.
"Him too," Kostya said.
Fin tensed when the second man came at him. I put a hand flat on his chest before he could do anything stupid.
"It's fine," I said. "Let him."
It wasn't fine, and I knew it as soon as Kostya put his hands on Fin. Something ugly twisted in my chest, and I had the irrational urge to grab Kostya and put him through a wall for being so brazen as to touch what was mine. It was a sick thought, a wrong thought. Not a thought a vor should have about his own fucking men.
