Page 40 of The Last Dance

He shook his head. “No.”

I tried to decide if I was being surveilled or stalked. There was probably a difference, but I didn’t care enough to parse it. “You see the whole show?” I asked.

His mouth twitched, a muscle movement so small it had to be intentional. “Enough.”

He pushed off the frame, came a little further into the room. Stopped two steps from me, which was either a courtesy or a warning. “I have tried for two years to move Sasha out of this house,” he said, voice as dry as the empty vodka bottles in the bin behind the club. “Vadim will not hear it. The promise he made to her father sits in him like a splinter. He refuses to let anyone take it out.”

I chewed on that. “So you thought you’d let me poke it with a stick.”

Yuri’s eyes almost crinkled. “You have a way of finding the tender spots.”

“Why haven’t you just told him?” I asked. “Vadim. If you think it’s the right move, why not just say it?”

He gave me the look of a man who had tried, and had the conversational scars to prove it. “It is not my job to correct the boss. I suggest. He decides.”

“Sounds healthy,” I said, earning the faintest flicker of a smile.

He shrugged. “Health is overrated.”

I thought about what Sasha had said, about being owed, about being permanent. I said, “He doesn’t have to break the promise. He just has to keep it differently. Give her a place, an account, a life she builds herself. He doesn’t have to keep her in this house, with full access to all the wiring and the staff and… you. That’s not part of the deal.”

Yuri was silent for a moment, and in that silence I realized I had just made an argument he’d been waiting two years to make stick. He nodded, once, slow. “That is reasonable,” he said.

The air between us changed, subtle but absolute. The difference between two magnets held apart and the second you let them touch.

He gave me the single nod, and I realized that for Yuri, this was the equivalent of a handshake and a glass raised in salute. Without another word, he pivoted and left. There was no footstep, no creak in the hinge, not even the sound of a suit jacket shifting as he slipped into the hall.

The room was empty again, except for the echo of the idea he’d left behind. I sat for a minute, listening to the absence of his presence, and wondered if the house itself had heard what I’d said.

If it hadn’t, it would soon.

I got up to go look for Vadim. The walk from the sitting room to his office was a corridor of second-guessing and mental dry runs.

I was already playing out four different versions of the confrontation: the direct appeal, the strategic withdrawal, the noble sacrifice, and the nuclear option where I just set the drapes on fire and waited to see who showed up with the extinguisher. I figured I’d improvise, because I always did, but for once I wanted to arrive with an actual plan.

The door was half open. Vadim’s voice, low and measured, was in mid-sentence: “—the condo on Marchetti. The one with the garage entrance. I want it ready by Friday. Security code changed. Utilities live before she moves in.”

Lin, notepad in hand, replied in a near-whisper. “She will require a staff. Minimum two. Your preference?”

“Not ours,” Vadim said. “Discreet agency. She needs to believe they report only to her.”

Yuri was a silent sentinel at the back wall, arms folded, one foot propped against the baseboard like a man posing for a mug shot he fully intended to win. His eyes flicked to me as I entered, and I saw the faintest glint of recognition—the look of a man who already knew the ending, but wanted to see how I’d play the last scene.

Vadim didn’t glance up until Lin had finished writing. Then he did, and the full force of his attention landed on me with the precise weight of a sledgehammer. He took in the cut on my cheek, the wrinkle in my shirt, the lingering caffeine tremor in my right hand. He missed nothing, not even the half-step hesitation I made at the threshold.

“You wanted to speak to me,” he said. Not a question. I nodded, but before I could launch into my speech, he raised a hand and cut me off. “You heard?”

I looked at Yuri, who gave the barest hint of a nod—yes, I heard, yes, this is happening, yes, you’re not crazy.

“Marchetti is nice,” I said, because my brain had vapor-locked.

Vadim’s mouth curled up, just enough to acknowledge the move. “She’ll be happier there.”

I tried to read his mood, but it was locked up tight as always. I turned to Lin, who hadn’t looked up once during the exchange. “Is she getting the garage for the car, or for security?”

“Both,” Lin said, pencil already moving. “She likes to be seen, but not watched.”

I nearly laughed, but stopped myself.