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“You’re with Rusakov.”

“I’m with whoever’s winning.” He pats my shoulder as he passes me on the stairs, the way you’d pat a dog that’s done its trick. “Sunday, Fyodor. Seven o’clock. Bring the girl.”

I listen to his footsteps all the way to the bottom. The street door. The Mercedes pulling away from the curb.

Then I stand alone in the stairwell, with my father’s hand still burning on my shoulder.

Every day. The truth, even when it’s ugly.

I’ve never had to tell Evaria anything uglier than this.

EVARIA

The lawyer in Evanston has a cat.

It’s enormous and orange, and it sits on a stack of files on the corner of her desk, watching us with the same expression as its owner. Assessing. Unimpressed. Faintly annoyed that we’ve taken up its morning.

Margaret Albrecht is somewhere in her seventies. She has silver hair in a sharp bob, and wears her reading glasses on a beaded chain. She has, according to Zhenya’s spreadsheet, broken three family trusts in Illinois that everyone else swore were unbreakable.

She’s been reading Papa’s for forty minutes without saying a word.

I sit with my hands folded in my lap and try not to fidget. Zhenya sits beside me like a coiled spring.

I’m not really here for the trust. I’m here because Zhenya asked me to come. In twenty-five years she has never once asked me for anything, so I said yes before she’d finished the question.

While Margaret reads, I count days in my head.

Days since Papa died. Days since the funeral. Days since I saw Arina last…

I shift in my seat, and the cat narrows its eyes at me.

Margaret finally sets the last page down. She takes off her glasses, lets them drop on their chain, and looks at my sister.

“Who drafted this?”

“Viktor Sokolov,” Zhenya says.

“`Ah, now it makes sense.” Margaret sounds almost admiring. “It’s very good. It’s one of the best I’ve seen.”

“Can you break it?” Zhenya asks, trying to look calm and composed but coming across more like she is preparing to begin ripping the world apart.

“No.”

Zhenya doesn’t move. I don’t think she even blinks.

“There’s no ambiguity in the conditions,” Margaret goes on. “None in the timeline. Your father was of sound mind, and there are three separate physicians’ statements to prove it. He knew one of you would try.” She taps the document. “But that isn’t the interesting part.”

“What is the interesting part?” I ask.

Margaret looks at me for the first time. Then she turns to a page near the back and slides it across the desk.

“The secondary provisions,” she says. “Where the shares go if one of you refuses. Most fathers would leave it to charity, or a cousin, or the other children. Your father’s done something else entirely.” She points with one finger. “The beneficiary is named in a sealed schedule. Held by Mr. Sokolov. To be opened only upon forfeiture.”

I read the paragraph twice. Zhenya reads it once, and her face goes white.

“He’s hidden it,” she says.

“He has.” Margaret leans back in her chair, and the cat stretches and resettles itself on the files. “Which means that if you refuse, Miss Maximova, you won’t simply lose your share. You’ll be handing it to someone. And you won’t know who until it’s too late to take it back.”