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He began walking toward me. I took a glass of champagne from a passing tray and stayed where I was.
Riley drifted closer to the press line. Amy moved one donor away from my right side. Sloane angled herself so she could see Dmitry without looking like she was watching him. Across the room, Nikolai’s entire body went rigid, and Sloane caught his sleeve as she passed. He looked down at her, and she shook her head once. For perhaps the first time in his life, Nikolai Morozov obeyed someone before being threatened with bodily harm.
Dmitry stopped in front of me. Up close, it seemed as though violence had settled too deeply into his body to be hidden by tailoring. His shoulders remained loose, his weight balanced evenly, his hands empty but ready.
“Miss Bellandi.” His voice was deep and resonant, but somehow contained a sneer.
“It’s Miss Caruso.”
“Names become complicated when territory is attached to them.”
Dmitry glanced across the room. Nikolai lifted his champagne glass in acknowledgment, though the look on his face suggested he would have preferred smashing the glass and slicing Dmitry’s throat with a jagged shard.
“You looked different at Nocturne,” Dmitry observed with barely concealed sarcasm.
The words were meant to startle me. I didn’t startle easily.
I took a sip instead. “I wore fewer clothes.”
“You were more honest then.”
“Men always think naked women are honest. It’s why they say such stupid things around them.”
His eyes narrowed with interest as he cocked his head. “Sergei chose well.”
“Sergei didn’t choose me.”
“No?” Dmitry looked toward him again. “Then why has ‘The Shield’ not looked anywhere else since you entered the room?”
I didn’t answer him, and Dmitry leaned slightly closer, though not enough to prompt security to intervene. His cologne smelled faintly of smoke and expensive leather.
“Levon believes you will give him the ports,” he said.
“Levon wants the Bellandi companies,” I replied. “What do you want?”
“You know what I want.”
“I know you need Armenians to fight a war you’re too frightened to take care of yourself.”
His smile disappeared as his eyes narrowed to slits.
“Levon wants the ports,” Dmitry said. “He wants customs officers who look away, warehouses with respectable leases, and ships that enter American waters without attracting questions. He thinks Sokolov will give him those things.”
“And you?”
“I want Sergei where his brothers cannot reach him.”
The room seemed to contract around us, all music and candlelight and expensive conversation becoming distant.
“Why?”
Dmitry looked beyond me at Sergei.
“My father considered Raffaele Bellandi’s interference an insult. Sergei should have died in that apartment beside the woman, but Raffaele took him away,” Dmitry continued. “Then he took the girl’s body before our morgue contact could finish his work.”
“You mean before you could make her disappear.”
“Exactly.”
