Page 27

“No, you weren’t. You were trying to make extra money behind my family’s back. And I don’t give second chances. Get out.” I push him away from me.

Stepan looks at Garick and Pyotr for support, but gets nothing.

I point my knife to his men, “If you two want to follow him, go now. If you stay, you work for me.”

One of them leaves, looking back and gesturing to his friend, who follows shortly after.

I’m not surprised.

The rain's coming down properly when we get outside.

Pyotr goes to bring the car around. Garick and I stand under the overhang of the loading bay, watching water sheet off the edge of the roof into puddles that already look like they've been there for a century.

My hands are shaking now. They held perfectly still upstairs, and the second I walked out of that office, they started trembling and they won't stop.

I shove them into my coat pockets.

“How did you know I was here?” I ask.

“Pyotr called me.”

“Pyotr called you?”

“After he called you.” Garick glances sideways at me. “He was worried you'd go alone.”

“I did go alone.”

“You went with Pyotr.”

“Pyotr's sixty-three.”

“Pyotr once broke a man's arm in three places for scratching your father's car.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “I'd say you were covered.”

I don't laugh. I'm too busy trying to understand what just happened.

“You could have taken over,” I say.

“Not my place.”

“Volkov wanted you to. He was practically begging. All you had to do was sit down in that chair and tell him what to do, and he'd have done it.”

“Probably.” He pulls a face, like the thought disgusts him.

“So why didn't you?”

Garick turns to face me properly. Rain drips from the edge of the roof.

“Because then he'd have listened to me,” he says. “Tomorrow, he'd have listened to me again. In a month, every man on your father's payroll would know that if they wanted something done, they came to me instead of you.” He shrugs. “That's not what your father wanted and not what you need.”

“What do I need?”

“For them to know that when you walk into a room, they stand up.”

I stare at him.

Papa spent my whole life keeping me out of rooms like that one. Sending me upstairs. Telling me it wasn't my concern. And then he went and picked a man who walked into the first room I ever tried to own and stood behind me and made every man in it look at me.

I don't know how to feel about that, so I look at the puddles instead.