Page 57 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

Hugo’s anger isn’t a problem. Hugo’s anger is confirmation. A man who didn’t feel the pressure wouldn’t be leaving fourteen voicemails at increasing volume about a woman he has no claim on, in a life that is no longer his to have opinions about. The anger means I’m winning, which means Luna is safer than shewas before I started, which means the voicemails were worth listening to after all.

I call Igor.

Hugo’s house is in Lakeview, a narrow three-story brownstone on a block that costs more than it looks like it costs, which is the point of it. He bought it three years ago when he was still pulling real money from the organization, when I still found him more useful than irritating.

The street has good sightlines in both directions. Armin finds a spot forty feet out with a clean view of the front steps and a fast exit onto the cross street if it comes to that.

The wire feed comes through the receiver between us, a low crackle of ambient street noise and the distant compression of a city going about its afternoon. Armin pours coffee from a thermos—two cups, mine first, which is not something I ever asked for and which he has always done without being acknowledged—and says nothing. He has his own binoculars. He settles them against his face, and we sit in the silence.

Igor and Hank arrive on foot, as instructed. A car announces itself. Two men in good coats walking at an even pace are furniture until they stop in front of your door and ring the bell.

Igor is six foot four and has the kind of face that doesn’t need an expression to communicate its full range of intentions. Hank is shorter, leaner, and has a gift for moving in ways that feel wrong without being possible to object to—a half-step, a weight shift, a turn of the shoulder—that make the person across from him feel like the ground has moved. His favorite tool is a pocketknife that’s seen more blood than a butcher shop.

Together, they are a vocabulary I’ve been fluent in for years, and Hugo is about to receive a message in it.

I put the binoculars up.

Hugo answers in a dress shirt with the collar open, which suggests he was at home and trying to look like a man with nothing to worry about. He sees Igor first. Then he sees Hank. Something moves across his face—fast, controlled, but there—and he squares his shoulders and leans against the door frame with his arms crossed, the posture of a man telling himself he is comfortable.

“Gentlemen,” Hugo says, through the wire. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

Igor says nothing. He simply looks at Hugo. Hank adjusts his coat.

“What can I do for you?” Hugo presses.

“Mr. Fedorov received your messages,” Igor says. “He wanted to respond.”

Hugo laughs. “He couldn’t respond himself?”

Hank moves—just a small shift of weight, sudden, no reason for it—and Hugo’s whole body winces before he can stop it. He recovers, smiling like he meant to do that.

Igor continues as though nothing happened. “Your access to the organizational accounts has been revised. Email, expense line, and the shared calendar. PR communications only, going forward.”

Hugo’s jaw tightens. “That’s acquisitions.”

“Was,” Igor says.

A beat. I watch Hugo process this through the binoculars, watch him decide how to carry it. He is not stupid, Hugo—that has always been both the problem and the occasional utility—and he knows that the ground under him has shifted.

He pulls his arms tighter across his chest. He looks at Igor, not Hank, which is the right call because looking at Hank is its own kind of problem. “He’s moving me to PR.”

“You’ll find the transition materials in your inbox.”

“Because of her.” He says it like the word costs him. “Because of a woman he’s been seeing for five minutes, he’s restructuring my entire?—”

Hank moves again. Hugo stops mid-sentence and takes half a step back into his doorway. His hand finds the door frame. I lower the binoculars for a moment and look at Armin, who’s looking straight ahead with the expression of a man watching something he finds quietly satisfying.

I put the binoculars back up.

“There is also the matter of the secondary accounts,” Igor says.

Hugo’s composure, which he has been holding with both hands since he opened the door, goes somewhere briefly, and what’s underneath is just a man who has been caught and knows it. His chin comes up. His mouth sets. He is trying to look like a man who doesn’t know what secondary accounts Igor is referring to, and he is not succeeding. “What secondary accounts?”

“The ones in Bratislava,” Igor says. “And the one held in Geneva. The other in Quebec, do you need me to go over the sum total of your hidden accounts right now? Did you forget about them?”

“No, I?—”

Igor reaches into his coat—Hugo’s whole body goes rigid—and produces an envelope, which he holds out at arm’s length.