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The city keeps glittering under my hands.

I believe him.

And I pray that we both make it out the other side so that I can re-live moments like this over and over and over again.

16

DMITRI

The apartment is one of many easily accessible properties within my reach.

An easily accessible sublet. Third floor. Clean lease. No name that traces to me.

And the window looks directly down onto the garden of a certain chic boutique hotel with a garden dressed for winter money…

Outdoor heaters stand like sentries between the tables, low blue flames under black hoods, warm enough to keep coats open and conversations long.

Ornate furniture: wrought-iron chairs with scrolled backs, marble-topped tables too heavy to steal, planters of evergreen that have been clipped into obedience. String lights in the trees, not festive, just expensive.

A gravel path raked into lines with the snow cleared to the edges and banked like a warning.

From up here it looks like a room without a ceiling. The kind of place senior men sit when they want to be seen by the right people and not by anyone else.

There is no sign of Elias yet.

The boy’s instruction was simple. Bring Tito Lucci into the garden. Sit with him. Keep him talking.

And if Tito is not there, take the highest-ranking general who will sit and pull intel from his mouth without looking like he is pulling. He has a micro-wire that is solid enough tech to be within range of my receiver up here.

I listen and hear the hotel lobby in fragments…heels, a laugh that does not belong to Elias, a door.

Meanwhile, Hardy works beside me without speaking. The sniper rifle is already on the bipod. He is prepping it the way other men pour coffee.

Cheek weld. Scope. Elite setup.

Hardy is a decorated military sniper. I have watched him do this more times than I can remember.

One shot. One name crossed off. Go again. It’s how Hardy works when he’s not preparing my breakfast or running errands across town.

The man never misses. Not in rain. Not in wind. Not when the target is walking and thinks the night is still his.

I am lucky to have him. As far as Hardy is concerned there is no need for an accord. Loyalty or death. That is the whole religion. He does not sit at tables with Maxim and Nikolai and talk about time. No, Hardy stands in rooms like this and makes the distance honest.

“Hold until I say,” I tell him.

“Yes, sir.”

The wire crackles. Then he is there. Elias steps out into the garden and the heaters catch the edges of his winter coat. Dark wool. Belted. Hair shining under the string lights. That pretty face looking as radiant as ever.

Elias looks like a boy who belongs in a place like this and also like a boy who will steal the silver if you leave him alone with it.

My cock notices. My chest notices too.

Elias knows not to look up.

Two men join Elias. Fuck. Neither is Tito.

The wire gives me their voices before the faces fully resolve. One I know. Zane. The fixer. The man who put his hand on my boy’s knee in the park and walked away smug with a USB full of my false hours.