Page 3

I park out front.

Papa's men pull in half a block behind me. They've been following us everywhere since the funeral. One of them has a sandwich. I give them a look through the windshield that I hope says, if I'm not out in an hour, come in shooting. The one with the sandwich gives me a thumbs up.

Very reassuring.

A train goes over as I get out, so loud it rattles the windows of the parked cars. The sidewalk shakes under my shoes. When it's gone, I can hear something else coming from inside the gym.

The heavy, rhythmic slap of something hitting something.

I tell myself it's a punching bag.

The door sticks. I have to shoulder it open, which is a perfect start, because I've rehearsed exactly how I'm going to walk in. Cool. Bored. A Maximova who's been sent to inspect a purchase and has already decided not to buy it.

Instead, I stumble in with my shoulder and catch the door before it slams.

Nobody notices. Nobody's looking at the door.

The gym is bigger than it looks from outside. Old brick, high windows filmed with dust, heavy bags hanging from chains along one wall. It smells of sweat and rubber and the kind of bleach that doesn't quite cover anything. There are maybe a dozen men scattered around, and every one of them has stopped what they're doing to watch the ring in the middle of the room.

So I watch it too.

There are two men in it.

One of them is big. Tall, heavy through the shoulders, built like he's spent years lifting things for money. He's breathing hard, blood running from his nose into his mouth, and he's circling with his hands up like he's trying to remember why he agreed to this.

The other one is bigger.

He's barefoot. Black shorts, no shirt, hands taped. His back is to me. The ink across his shoulders is clearer here than in Zhenya's grainy photo. Wings, I think, or something like wings, dark and spread wide from one shoulder blade to the other. He's not even breathing hard.

The first man throws a punch.

I don't see what happens next. Nobody could have. One second there's a fist coming at his head, and the next the first man is on his back on the canvas, staring at the ceiling, with no idea how he got there.

The room stays quiet.

The bigger man crouches down beside him. Says something too low for me to hear. Then he holds out a taped hand and pulls the other man to his feet, slaps him once on the shoulder, almost kindly, and sends him toward the ropes.

Then he turns around.

And looks straight at me.

He's younger than I expected. Older than me, but not by much. His hair is dark and cropped close, and his nose has clearly been broken at least once and set by someone who didn't care. There's a fresh cut across one cheekbone. His eyes are a pale, startling green.

I know those eyes. I've seen them before, across a ballroom, at the Orlov wedding, on his sister.

He ducks between the ropes and drops down onto the floor. Pulling a towel off the post, he wipes his face with it, unhurried, while every man in the room pretends very hard to be doing something else.

Then he walks toward me.

I don't step back. I'd rather die. But I'm suddenly, deeply aware of my lipstick.

He stops a few feet away. Up close, he's even bigger.

"Fyodor Nevolin," I say. It comes out cold and steady, which is a miracle.

He looks at me for a long moment. His gaze moves over my face like he's checking something against a picture in his head.

"Theo," he says. His voice is low and rough. "Only my father calls me Fyodor."