Chapter 6
PAVEL
I wake before the alarm.
This is not unusual. I have not needed an alarm clock since my early twenties, when I trained myself out of slow mornings the same way I trained myself out of most luxuries.
Discipline. The understanding that a man who sleeps deeply is a man who trusts his perimeter, and I have never trusted my perimeter enough for that.
What is unusual is the feeling.
I lie in the dark of my bedroom and sit with it. It’s not contentment. It’s not happiness, a word that has always seemed faintly theoretical to me, something that happens to other people in other kinds of lives. It’s something quieter than either of those things, and more dangerous.
Peace.
This is not good.
I shower. I dress. I stand at the floor-to-ceiling windows of my penthouse with coffee I don’t drink for the flavor and watch the city wake beneath me, gray and indifferent in the early light, and I think about Molly Bennett.
I have been thinking about Molly since she found her way into my office. She’s a problem I have not solved. Not in the years she’s worked for me, and certainly not last night.
She’s exceptional at her work. Precise, perceptive, possessed of a dry wit which she deploys so quietly that half the time you miss it entirely, and the other half it has already landed, leaving mirth in her wake.
She walks into rooms as if she belongs in them.
The woman is entirely herself, no matter the situation.
I don’t know how being around harsh men all these years has not worn her down.
Instead, she looks at me like she’s constantly deciding how much of my bullshit she’s willing to tolerate, and the answer is always just enough.
Her patience with my men is extraordinary.
And she does it all with an hourglass figure, a slightly crooked smile, and a tray of those infernal brownies I hate, but appreciate on everyone else’s behalf.
I have managed it. Until now.
I set the coffee down on the windowsill. Outside, the city continues its indifference.
What happened last night cannot happen again.
The clarity arrived sometime in the small hours, after she left on unsteady legs.
I watched her go and felt something pull tight in my chest that I have no name for and no time to develop one.
Then I sat alone in my office in the dark and was honest with myself.
I am a pakhan. I have been one long enough that the word no longer feels like a title.
It is simply the shape of my life. The obligations it carries are not negotiable, and chief among them is that sentiment is a liability.
Attachment is a vulnerability. Any man in my position who forgets this does not remain in my position for long.
He doesn’t remain anything for long.
I learned this once before, at a cost I do not revisit. I will not learn it again. Particularly at Molly’s expense. Last night was a one-time event, never to be repeated. For her sake.
Molly arrives early, which is when she always arrives. I know this without checking. I give her twenty minutes to settle, then call her in.
While I wait, I stand at my window again and think about Fedor Vinogradov, because that is the thing I should be thinking about instead of the way Molly looked in the low light of my office last night.
Igor brought me the news delivered in the flat, careful tone my sovetnik uses when he’s telling me something I will not want to hear.
Fedor is getting out.
Igor backed it up with a visit from his informant, but I had already trusted Igor’s intelligence. His information is always solid, so why he arranged the meeting with Guy, I will never know. Igor does things his own way, and while I find it confusing at times, he has never let me down.
Someone with influence intervened on Fedor’s behalf, which means he still has allies I have not identified. This is a problem I should have anticipated. The fact that I did not is an irritation I am still processing.
I’m responsible for Fedor’s imprisonment.
He had bombed a shipment of mine and killed four of my men.
His brigadier, Kirill Andreeva, had killed my own brigadier, Daniel Yatsenko, on Fedor’s order.
I could not prove either crime in any court that would have accepted my testimony, and so I handled it the only way available to me.
I planted evidence. Carefully, methodically, over the course of three months. Financial trails, intercepted communications, a carefully constructed fiction that pointed to Kirill as an Interpol informant.
I did not manufacture the conclusion. I simply laid a trail of breadcrumbs, and Fedor followed it to its inevitable end, because Fedor has always been a man who acts on his suspicions before he confirms them.
Kirill and three others died in Fedor’s car bombing. He was arrested six minutes later on charges that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the attention the bombing had drawn.
Justice, of a kind. The only kind available to me.
I have not lost sleep over it. Kirill was not an innocent man, and neither were the three who died with him. These are the mathematics of the world I inhabit, and I have always been clear-eyed about them.
What I did not account for was Molly. I had no reason to. I didn’t know her then. Fedor’s framing took place just over seven years ago, and Molly’s been with me for the past three years.
I didn’t anticipate that she would become someone I thought about.
I didn’t think Fedor was ever leaving federal prison.
And now Fedor is getting out, and he will be looking for leverage. If he learns that Molly is anything more to me than an employee, he will use her without hesitation. He will use her the way I used Kirill. He will follow the path to its inevitable end.
I will not allow that.
The knock at my door is exactly on time. “You wanted to see me?”
She steps inside and closes the door behind her.
She is composed in the way I have come to recognize as deliberate, the straightness of her posture that means she has already prepared for this conversation.
She’s bracing. Her strawberry blonde hair is pinned back.
Her expression is professional and gives nothing away.
She’s a better actor than most people I know, and I know some of the best.
“Sit down, Molly.”
She sits. Crosses her ankles. Looks at me with those warm brown eyes and waits.
I remain standing. I have considered how to say this on and off since four in the morning, and I have not improved on directness. “What happened last night cannot happen again.”
Something trails over her face. It is brief enough that I would miss it if I were not watching carefully.
“I value your work,” I continue. “I value your position here. Nothing about that changes. But what occurred was inappropriate, and I am responsible. I understand if you feel you need to step away from this role. I will ensure you have a reference that reflects the quality of your work rather than last night.”
There’s a silence. Then Molly exhales, and her shoulders drop a fraction, and she smiles. It’s a bright smile. Relieved.
Entirely too bright for my liking.
“Honestly? I’m so glad you said that. I was worried this was going to be weird.”
What did she just say?
“I completely agree,” she continues, in the pleasant, professional tone she uses in client meetings.
“It was a crazy night, and I think we both got caught up in it, but it’s in the past. We got it out of our system.
I have no intention of making this awkward, and I definitely don’t want to leave. I love this job.”
She says it like the matter is already settled. Filed, closed, and returned to the shelf.
I find, unexpectedly, that I am irritated.
Not because she is wrong. She’s not wrong. She’s saying precisely what I said first, arriving at exactly the conclusion I arrived at, and she’s doing it with the easy composure of a woman who has already processed the situation and moved on.
This is the correct response. It’s mature and professional and it makes everything considerably simpler.
But she should not be this unaffected by my rejection.
The thought surfaces, and I recognize it immediately for what it is. Ego. Nothing more than that. I said these words first, and she agreed, and now I’m standing here mildly affronted that she agreed too readily, which is absurd, and I am not a man who permits absurdity to occupy him for long.
I set it aside.
If Molly is content to close the door on last night and return to what we were, then no one will ever learn there is anything between us. Fedor will have no leverage. She will not become a path someone decides to follow.
She will be safe.
It’s the only thing that matters now.
I have not allowed myself to care whether someone is safe in a very long time. The feeling is uncomfortable in the way unfamiliar things are. Foreign.
I’m not sure what to do with it except act on it, which I already am. “Good. Then we are in agreement.”
“We are absolutely in agreement.” She stands, smoothing her jacket with brisk efficiency, already moving on. “I’ll have the Vasiliev notes ready for your review by eleven.”
“Thank you.”
She nods once, collects herself, and heads for the door.
I watch her go, and the thing in my chest pulls tight again, quiet and inconvenient, the same way it did last night when she left on unsteady legs. Can’t peel my eyes from her ample ass under that skirt. Don’t want to.
I don’t want to stop this. No part of me wants it to be a one-time thing. It was addicting and toxic and so good I never wanted it to end. Last night was transformative for me. Something raw and unformed.
This morning it has edges. I’ll cut myself with it if I’m not careful.
I turn back to the window, to the gray, indifferent Manhattan, and I think about Fedor Vinogradov, and what it will cost me to keep a woman, who is simply my employee, safe from a man who has every reason to destroy me.
Whatever the cost, I will pay it. Ego, body, and heart be damned.