Page 34 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

We meet at the place he favors on Devon, where the owner kisses his cheeks, and the back room holds one table. I arrive four minutes early, by design. Boris is already there, because arriving first is a statement about whose city it is, and I let him have it, because the statement costs me nothing and feeds him for an hour.

“Ivan Federov.” He doesn’t rise, waves me into the chair with two fingers. “You look less tired than the last time. Something agrees with you.”

“The freight business.” I let him enjoy not believing me.

“No one in history has looked rested because of freight.” He pours the tea himself. “We will eat first. Then you will tell me why I should still trust a man whose family is marrying into Witte’s house.”

So, there it is, on the table before the bread, which, from Boris, is a courtesy. He could have let it rot underneath the lunch and watched me dance around it. Instead, he is straightforward, a tactic he affords very few.

The lamb arrives, and then the eggplant, and by the time the flatbread is torn by his own hands, I knew where we’re heading. He tells me about his granddaughter, who has advanced to regionals with the violin, second chair, robbed of first chair by politics he describes in the vocabulary of racketeering.

“Surely such oversight can be amended.”

His lips coil into a grim smile. “I prefer to let my progeny figure out their own way in the world. If I fix everything for them, they learn nothing.”

“Wise.”

Then the plates are cleared, the tea is refreshed, and Boris folds his hands. “The wedding. Your brother and the Witte girl.”

“Stepbrother.”

“To the city, family is family. To me, also.” His eyes are old and black and miss nothing. “Pyotr Witte and I have a history.You know this, everyone knows this. The history has its own zip code.”

“Da. Your conflict is well-known.”

He turns his glass a quarter rotation, the only fidget he owns. “I do not do business beside that man, downstream of that man, or within smelling distance of that man. So, when your house puts a ring on his daughter, I’m required to ask what I’m sitting at this table with.”

“You are sitting with me.” I let that stand alone for a moment, because it is the entire answer. Then I give him the rest, because Boris has earned paragraphs. “Hugo married for his own table, not mine. He did not ask, did not inform, and did not understand what he was disturbing, because he has never once given a shit about anyone but himself.”

“Sounds like a bad attribute in a captain.”

“It is. Which is why his title might be captain within our ranks, but to the outside world, he is a public-facing mouthpiece and nothing more. The organization’s commitments are made by me. They are unchanged.”

“Unchanged.”

“Greenstone’s corridor moves on our freight on the terms we built, and no dinner at Pyotr Witte’s house alters one comma of it, because no one at that dinner signs that deal but me.”

Boris watches me through the steam off his tea. Seventy-one years of reading men across tables, and he takes his time about it, while I sit still and let myself be read. It’s the only move that works on him, because it’s not really a move.

“Your father,” he says finally, “would have lied to me just now. Beautifully. I would have enjoyed it and counted my fingers afterward to make sure I still had them. He was slick, your father.”

“I do not have such qualities, Boris. As you are well aware. My word is my bond.”

“You are direct. No finesse. No games. No fun.” He lifts the cognac the owner brings without being asked, two glasses, his ritual for concluded business. “You’re a less entertaining man and a far better investment. The corridor proceeds. Papers to your Armin by Thursday.”

We drink. He tells me one more violin story, this one with a villain, an adjudicator from Skokie whose name he pronounces the way other men spit, and walks me to the door himself, hand heavy on my shoulder.

“Watch your house, Ivan Federov,” he says, in parting, quiet enough for two. “A man who rearranges your deals without asking will do it again. The second time, he asks someone else’s permission instead of yours. Make sure you know whose.”

“Hugo will not get another play over me. I assure you.”

He pats my shoulder twice, grandfather and warlord in the same gesture, and goes back in to finish the cognac alone. His warning rides with me to the car.

The trouble is, he’s absolutely right. I know it, thanks to Armin’s hard work and my own instinct. Every move Hugo has made for months has been to undermine me.

Now, the question is how to retaliate.

The drive back is long with the lake on the right, and the city assembling itself out of the haze. Strange to see fog this late in the day. I should be thinking about lunch. At the first stoplight, I hear three beeps for the three texts from Luna.