Chapter 19
Daniil
Three months later.
My wife was standing on the kitchen table with a screwdriver.
“Before you say anything,” she said, “the power is off.”
I set down the coffees.
“Well. Good morning to you too.”
She wore my dark blue shirt, rolled at the sleeves, and nothing I could see beneath it. Her hair was pinned up badly. A loose strand kept falling into her eyes as she examined the light fitting above her head.
“It was buzzing again?”
“It’s a hum. Not a buzz.”
She pointed the screwdriver at me.
“Choose your next words carefully.”
I looked at her bare legs. At the tool. At the expression.
“You look beautiful.”
“Coward.”
“Maybe. But at least I’m still alive.”
She laughed, and I put a hand out. She set the screwdriver on the table, took my hand and stepped down onto the chair, then the floor. Her palm was warm against mine. The scar had faded to a pale line.
She caught me looking.
“Perfectly functional,” she said, and used that hand to steal my coffee.
“That one’s mine.”
She tasted it, made a face and gave it back.
“Yes. You’ve somehow made it taste disapproving.”
I handed her the other mug. She drank, closed her eyes for a moment, then leaned against me.
“Better.”
I put my arm around her. My hand found the small of her back beneath the shirt, and she tipped her face up for a kiss.
Three months ago, I had held that same hand shut in the back of a car and felt her blood come through my fingers.
I kissed her again.
“You’re trying to distract me,” she murmured.
“Is it working?”
“A little. I remain committed to the light.”
“I’ll have someone replace it while we’re out.”
She drew back far enough to look at me.
“Today?”
“Today.”
“The one I showed you?”
“The one you showed me.”
“I want that in writing.”
I took out my phone and typed a message to the electrician. She watched over my arm, sipping her coffee.
“You’ve forgotten the please. What is it with you Bratva and a lack of manners?!”
I added please and sent it.
“Excellent. We’re making progress.”
She left me in the kitchen with both mugs to carry upstairs.
I followed willingly. This was becoming a problem for my reputation.
Her studio door stood open. The drafting table had come from her place on Pioneer Street, along with her books and the plan chest and a small green chair she had insisted would fit beneath the window. Sure enough, it fitted perfectly. She reminded me of this whenever she sat in it.
The boxes of my father’s files had gone into storage. In their place were drawings, photographs, a chipped blue bowl full of erasers and a note pinned beside the desk in my handwriting: Dinner. Eight. You promised.
Neither of us had taken it down.
I put her coffee on the clear corner of the drafting table. She returned to her stool, tucked one foot under the other knee and picked up a pencil.
“The entrance hall,” she said, turning the drawing towards me. “This is what I’m showing you first.”
The bathhouse. Red Hook. Her bathhouse, now, at least in every way that mattered to her.
She had called me on Wednesday after winning the restoration commission. I had been halfway through a meeting with Anton when I heard her say, “I got it,” and then say it again because she couldn’t quite believe it herself.
Anton had heard enough to start grinning. We had abandoned the meeting and taken her to lunch.
I still thought about her face when the waiter brought champagne. She had kept reaching for the drawings in her bag, trying to show us things between courses.
“You know you’re allowed to celebrate without giving a presentation,” I said now.
“I don’t think that’s the case,” she replied, with a twinkle in her eye.
I bent over the paper.
She shifted the stool to make room for me.
We stayed there for several minutes. She explained what the entrance had looked like before someone partitioned it into offices. I asked about the stair. She showed me an old photograph, pleased that I had noticed.
My phone vibrated. The electrician could come that afternoon. I showed her the reply.
“My hero.”
“Finally.”
“Don’t become difficult. It’s provisional.”
I bent to kiss the side of her neck. She lifted her shoulder, laughing, and tried to keep drawing.
“I have to get dressed.”
“A shame.”
“Work boots. Hard hat. Very glamorous.”
“You could keep the shirt.”
She looked down at it.
“I was going to.”
“I need twenty minutes at headquarters,” I said. “Then I’ll meet you at the gate.”
“Twenty minutes with Arkady?”
“The business will take five. The insults take longer.”
“Tell him I’m expecting him tonight. He still hasn’t answered my message.”
“He’s coming.”
“He can tell me himself.”
I smiled.
She pointed her pencil at me. “And you can be on time, too.”
“Yes, Ksenia.”
“I like that tone. Use it more.”
She caught my wrist before I could leave and pulled me back for one more kiss. No joke this time. Her hand rested against my cheek, her thumb moving once along my jaw.
“I’m glad you’re coming.”
“So am I.”
Downstairs, I put away the screwdriver and moved the chair back into place. The kitchen was quiet with the power off. Upstairs, my wife was singing something badly while she dressed.
I stood still long enough to hear the next line.
Then I picked up my keys.
Arkady had his boots on my desk.
“No,” I said from the doorway.
He looked up from his phone. Looked at his boots. Lowered them with the air of a man making a substantial concession.
“Good morning, Pakhan.”
“You’ve been speaking to my wife?”
“True. You know, I prefer talking to her. She has better manners than you.”
“Ah, but she says you haven’t answered her message.”
He checked his phone, frowned and began typing.
“She sent it yesterday.”
“That’s not a long time! I’ve been extremely busy.”
“Eating?”
He looked gobsmacked. “Are you saying I shouldn’t eat? You want me to waste away?”
“You know, Ksenia does know where you live.”
He eyed me, then he sent the message.
“There. Dinner confirmed. Domestic catastrophe averted.”
I hung up my coat. My father’s desk still dominated the room, but there were new chairs in front of it, comfortable ones. Arkady had complained when I bought them, then spent more time in them than anyone else.
“Maspeth?” I asked.
“Running. Yuri has the day shift organised. Anton’s cargo went through on Friday without a problem.”
He slid a photograph across the desk.
The amusement left his face.
“This is worth your time.”
Oleg Voronin stood outside a restaurant in Newark between two men I didn’t recognise. His hair was shorter. His mouth had healed.
I could still see Ksenia standing in that doorway with Kostya’s hand on her arm.
“When?”
“Thursday. The men run independent crews. Neither worked for Viktor before.”
“Before?”
“He’s offering them money and weapons. Work under his name, get his protection. One of them turned him down and called someone who called me.”
I studied the photograph.
“How many has he approached?”
“We know about two. Nikita’s checking for more.”
The Voronins had lost their access to our businesses. They were buying men who had never worked for us instead.
Kostya had cost them more than the failed kidnapping.
He had talked within days of his capture. At first he had tried to bargain: information in exchange for protection, names in exchange for money, the suggestion that a man with his experience could still be useful.
Eventually he had understood that usefulness was the only reason he was still breathing.
He had obtained the Volna code and passed it to the men organising the assassination.
He had supplied our schedules, identified people who could be bought, helped the Voronins put men where we would trust them.
Viktor had promised him control of the Orlov organisation once Mikhail was gone and Anton had proved incapable of replacing him.
Kostya had meant to help Anton prove it.
His phone backed up enough of his confession to start us moving. His information led us to Leonid Gusev, the waiter who had shot our fathers. We found him before Viktor could move him again.
Gusev was dead now. So was Kostya.
Anton had shot Kostya. I had stood beside him.
Kostya’s last attempt to save himself had been to ask for Ksenia.
I had given her the choice. She had been sitting at the kitchen table with her bandaged hand in her lap when I told her.
“Does he want to apologize?” she had asked.
“He says he does.”
She had looked at me for a long time.
“He had time to apologize in the garage. He offered me water.”
She was a hard woman. Ours was a hard life.
Ksenia hadn’t seen him again. She had asked me to tell her when it was over, and I had kept that promise.
Now Anton ran his waterfront without his uncle whispering behind him. The men Kostya had bought were gone. Our captains knew what had happened at Volna, and which family had ordered it. Viktor had paid for two murders and received a stronger alliance than the one he had tried to destroy.
He had not forgiven us for that.
“They’ve been quiet because they’re rebuilding,” I said.
Arkady nodded. “They can’t use Kostya’s people. So they’re finding their own.”
“And Oleg is doing the recruiting.”
“Apparently he has a gift for making people feel comfortable.”
I looked at him.
“I’m told he’s very polite.”
The joke did not reach his eyes.
“Take this seriously,” I said.
“I am.”
He leaned forward, his forearms on his knees.
“I’m speaking to the man who turned them down tomorrow. He knows people I don’t. We find out who else Viktor has approached before those crews start taking his orders.”
“Take Nikita.”
“Must I? He criticizes my driving.”
“Everyone criticizes your driving. The rest of the world has eyes.”
“Eyes? There’s a serious lack of fucking vision in this family.”
“Arkady.”
He held his hands up. “I’ll take him, I’ll take him.”
I believed him. I also knew that he would tell the story afterward as though I had begged him to bring our brother along for company.
I put the photograph in the drawer.
“And Luka?”