Page 9

His eyes drop, briefly, to where my hands are folded on the table. My knuckles are white. I didn’t notice until just now.

I move my hands to my lap.

The corner of his mouth curves, just slightly, just for a second, just for me. Like we’re sharing a secret I didn’t agree to keep.

“You’ll sign whatever my guys add to this,” he says.

“I’ll review them,” I say. “And sign what’s acceptable.”

“Eto interesno,” he says, that’s interesting, more to himself than to me. He picks up the paper from the table, looks at it once more, sets it back down. “Da. Yes. We’ll get married.”

I stand. My legs are steady. My hands are less so, but they’re at my sides where he can’t see them. I pick up my bag from the floor. And I have to walk out of this room knowing that the man who killed my father just agreed to marry me, and that my body did something I don’t understand while he was describing what that means, and that I’m going to have to live with both of those facts simultaneously for what may be a very long time.

“I’ll expect to hear from your lawyers by tomorrow,” I say.

“Tonight,” he says, watching me pick up my bag. “And don’t go anywhere. We clear?”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s a fact, Zayka,” he says. “Learn the difference.”

The word lands like a hand slipping into my pocket without asking. Zayka. Little rabbit. A pet name. He’s given me a pet name, in the first meeting, in front of his men, like I’m already his and we both know it. I keep my face exactly right and walk out.

I walk out without looking back. The hallway is long enough that I have to maintain the performance for another thirty seconds, past the man who led me in, past the two by the door, down the front steps and across to the car. I get in. The door closes.

The driver pulls out, and the compound disappears behind us.

I sit with my bag in my lap, and I stare out the window and think about what I just agreed to. I think about his voice and the way the room felt when he stood close to me and the thing that happened in my stomach that I still don’t understand. I think about my father, and then I think about him, and the fact that those two thoughts are now permanently connected is something I’m going to have to find a way to live with.

I’ve never wanted anyone before. I don’t know if that’s what this is. I don’t have enough experience to know. But something happened in that room, and it happened because of the man who destroyed my family, and I don’t know what to do with that, so I’m going to do what I always do, which is put it in a box and get back to work.

There’s work to do. I’m going to focus on that.

4

Volkov

She doesn’t look at the car when it pulls up.

Most people look at the car. It’s black, heavy, costs more than most people make in five years, and people notice it. She comes down the steps of her apartment building with one bag and a rolling suitcase. She looks straight at me. Not the car. Me. Like the car’s furniture and I’m the thing worth paying attention to.

“That’s everything?” I ask.

“I travel light,” she says.

She gets in without being asked. I get in after her.

Forty minutes to the estate with traffic. She spends the whole drive looking out the window, not at me, not at her phone, just watching Brooklyn go past like she’s memorizing it. Maybe she is. I’d do the same. Know your exits. Know your ground. She’s smart enough for that, I already know she’s smart enough for that. The problem is figuring out exactly how smart and what she’s planning to do with it.

My fiancée is not stupid. I’ve known this since Thursday. I’m still working out how much of a problem it’s going to be.

She’s also Berezin’s daughter. I keep coming back to that on the drive over. I killed her father six weeks ago, three weeks before she walked into my compound with a proposal, and now she’s in my car going to my house, and I let that happen because she might know something about Lavro. That’s the reason. That’s the only reason. I need to keep that clear.

The gate comes up, and I watch her clock it. Cameras, men, fence line, all of it. Her face doesn’t move. She just takes it in and tucks it away somewhere behind those eyes and keeps going. Blyad, damn. Most people crack inside five minutes around me. She walked into my compound three days ago, and she still hasn’t given me a single thing I didn’t take from her by force.

I’m going to make her slip.

The house is big, old, built to last, nothing pretty about it. She gets out of the car, looks up at the front of it for three seconds, then looks at me.