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I looked at the dates again. “Does Maxim know about this?”
“Not yet.”
“Good.”
Ivan watched me carefully. “You want to keep it from him?”
“I want to verify it before he starts a war.”
Ivan nodded once.
“I want the original banking records. I want the authority on every transfer, whatever contract the payment pretended to satisfy, and every living person who touched it.”
“That will take time.”
“Then take the time.”
“What about Dmitry Volkov? Yuri’s son?”
We’d seen him not so long ago. Dmitry had stepped into a Southie fight ring against Nikolai two years earlier. A Volkov against a Morozov, with half the criminal world in Boston watching. I had never believed money was the point.
I met Ivan’s gaze. “Find out who paid to put him in that ring.”
“You think the money could lead back through the same Orlov shell chain?”
“I’d always thought someone sent him to make a point. I still do.”
Ivan leaned back, considering it. “Kit has already started pulling the fight purse apart.”
A faint smile tugged at my mouth despite the file beneath my hand. “She is irritatingly good.”
“Yes,” Ivan said, sounding entirely too pleased. “She is.”
The private door opened before I could respond, and a familiar face walked in. Matteo Bellandi, Raffaele Bellandi’s brother, entered alone. He wore a dark charcoal suit with no tie, silver showing at his temples, his expression calm in the specific way of a man who had spent his life standing beside dangerous men and never once mistook proximity for safety. He crossed the room without offering his hand and placed a heavy gold signet ring on the table.
I recognized it before it stopped moving.
It was Raffaele’s.
Thirteen years disappeared beneath the amber light. For one moment, I saw blood on a Bellandi cuff and a white handkerchief pressed against my ruined ear and the slash going back into my hairline.
“My brother is asking for you,” Matteo began.
“What does he need?”
Matteo held my gaze. “He needs you to look out for his daughter,” he answered. “Her name is Alessia.”
I said nothing, and Matteo took the chair across from me, even though I hadn’t invited him to sit.
“She is twenty-six,” he continued. “American-born. Clever, furious, and deeply committed to making every person trying to protect her regret the effort.”
“Where is she?”
“That’s part of the problem.”
Ivan remained beside the wall, silent now, but listening.
“Raffaele arranged a safe place for her in Westchester,” Matteo said. “She stayed there for less than a day. Left the driver, the guards, the phone, and fifty thousand dollars cash untouched on the kitchen counter.”
