He spots me in the window booth and crosses quickly to us. Matvei half-rises out of habit, the lawyer's reflex to greet, but Alexei waves him down with a flat hand.
"Satyrins," he says to greet us.
"Alexei," I reply, pretending to pout. "What's this? You don't write, you don't call? I'm starting to think you're mad at me."
He doesn't smile or crack back. That disturbs me as much as his haunted expression does. Alexei always has a line ready, a quip, a barb.It's how he tells you he loves you. But there's no joke in sight right now.
"Can we talk?" he says instead.
Matvei reads the room faster than I do. He slides out of the booth. "I'll get coffee. For everyone. Though I'll warn you, Al, it tastes like shit." He claps a hand on my shoulder as he goes.
Alexei takes the seat across from me. He sits near the edge, angled toward the door, like he might bolt at any minute. That's not so strange for a man in his profession. But I don't like it any more than the rest of the bad vibes he's giving off.
"Bad day?" I ask to open the conversation.
"It's been a bad month," Alexei says.
I wait. You don't push Alexei. He'll get there.
"That favor," he says finally. "The thing I did for you. Calling around, finding Lukas, the lodge address, all of it." He raps his knuckles on the table.
"I know," I say. "I owe you for it."
He waves a hand. "Nah, forget it. I'd have done it for free. Bill Oglethorpe did me a good turn once. You're the closest thing I've got to a friend who isn't dead or in prison. I did it because I wanted to. That's not the problem."
"What's the problem?"
"Well," he says, still glancing toward the door repeatedly, "I had to call in some favors in order to do you that favor, you know what I mean? And one of those favors… it pulled a thread. You know how it goes. You reach for one thing and you wake up something else." He meets my eyes. "Newark."
I go still.
There are things you don't talk about. Every man like me has a few. Alexei and I have one between us, a thing from years back.That thing in Newark we don't talk about.We've kept it buried for a long time. It was safer that way for everyone involved. So if it's being dragged back into the light…
That's bad fucking news.
"What got dragged out of it?" I ask through gritted teeth.
"Enough that the wrong people are starting to ask the right questions," he says. "It's not coming for you. I made sure of that. Whatever's coming, it's coming for me." He pauses. "But it came loose because of what I did to help you. So…"
Alexei Ivanov fixes things. That's his whole deal. People in trouble call Alexei and he makes the trouble go away. He does it clean, and he never asks for anything but money and to be left alone after. He's the man other men go to when there's no one else. The man who stands between people and the deep, dark woods.
In all the years I've known him, I have never once seen him need help.
To be clear, he hasn't actually asked yet. I'm not sure he even knows the words. But if he's here and telling me this… I'm not gonna force him into it. I'm just gonna do what he did for me: anything the man requires.
So I don't make him ask.
"I owe you one," I say again, simple as that.
Alexei's eyes flick up.
He holds his breath for a second. A second more. One more…
And then he exhales, a relieved whistling sound. "You sure? You've got a lot more to risk now. A wife. A home. A flourishing patch of azaleas, from what I hear."
"All true," I agree.
"And you'd still climb into it?"
