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“One number from the old records is still moving,” Ivan said. “It called your mother three times on the day she died. Since then, it has been passed through a series of prepaid phones. The current one belongs to Arsen.”

A line from my mother to the man who drove the van.

Sergei looked at me. “Your decision.”

I picked it up.

My fingers shook, but only once.

This is Alessia Caruso. I know you drove the van the night the Petrosyans killed my mother. Tell me the truth, and the Morozovs will keep you alive long enough to give it.

I read the message twice before pressing send. The answer arrived three minutes later.

Levon thinks I failed twice while Dmitry thinks I remember too much. They’ll both kill me.

Another message followed.

Don’t bring any Bellandi men with you. I’ll meet with you tomorrow. I’ll tell you what happened.

I looked at Sergei.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

I looked down at my mother’s phone.

Eleven years ago, Arsen Vardanyan had driven the men who came to take me and left my mother dying in a car next to a bag filled with ordinary things for the people she loved. Now he wanted me to keep him alive.

“I want to hear what he has to say,” I answered.

Sergei’s hand closed around mine.

“Then we do this together.”

CHAPTER 25

Sergei

I had prepared Alessia as best I could.

I had given her a full risk assessment before we left the townhouse to go interview Arsen. Arsen might be lying, or he might be bait. Levon could have allowed him to break contact so he would lead us somewhere useful. Dmitry’s people could be monitoring the old Caruso number. Arsen could arrive armed, followed, or already marked for death.

She listened to it all.

Now she sat at the steel table beside me, wearing body armor beneath a black turtleneck sweater, the collar hidden at her throat and her wedding ring resting against the hand she had laid flat on the metal. She looked composed, but I knew the difference between calm and control.

“He’s been cleared,” Nikolai reported through my earpiece. “He doesn’t have a weapon or phone or any discernible tracker on him.”

The inner door opened then, and Arsen entered between two Morozov guards. He wore a gray sweater beneath a coat that fit badly across his shoulders, and three days of beard shadow darkened the lower half of his face. He had discarded the Petrosyan eternity ring from his finger before coming. A pale line remained where the ring had once been. His gaze landed on me, then moved to Alessia before he lowered himself into the chair opposite us.

A small green light appeared near the camera above the observation glass. Kit was recording. Arsen noticed the light and his mouth tightened.

Kit’s voice came through the speaker. “State your full name.”

Arsen looked at the camera. “Arsen Vardanyan.”

“And your relationship to Levon Petrosyan?”

“My mother and his father were cousins. I’ve worked inside his transport organization for nearly twenty-one years.”