Chapter 10 #2
“Do not play language games with me.”
“They are not games.”
Nikolai leaned toward Aleksei and whispered, “He’s definitely about to die.”
Aleksei whispered back, “Maxim will make it look accidental.”
“I can hear you both,” Maxim said.
“That’s because we wanted you to,” Nikolai replied.
“Speak for yourself,” Aleksei murmured. “I was hoping to survive until we got dessert.”
Despite himself, Maxim’s eyes flicked toward them with the faintest edge of irritation, which was as close as we would get to relief.
Sergei did not move from the wall. “Did you remove Orlov eyes from the street?”
I kept my gaze on Maxim. “Yes.”
“Whose street?” Sergei asked.
There it was. Sergei never wasted questions. He stored them like knives and used the one that would cut cleanest. I finally looked at him, only for a second. His green eyes were already waiting.
“The relevant street,” I said.
Nikolai groaned. “Jesus, Ivan. Even I know that answer is terrible, and I think ‘relevant street’ might be a nightclub Aleksei would open.”
Aleksei considered it. “Relevant Street has potential.”
Maxim struck the table once with two fingers. “Enough,” he said. “Ivan, listen carefully. If Mikhail is circling something operationally significant, I need to know whether it threatens us.”
“It could,” I said.
“How?”
“If the Orlovs identify the intrusion source, they may use it as leverage or bait against our current surveillance. They may also assume Morozov involvement once they realize the first trail was false.”
“Will they be right?”
I smiled faintly. “They are often accidentally right for the wrong reasons.”
Maxim’s jaw tightened. “That is not an answer.”
“It is the only answer I can give you tonight.”
“No,” he said. “It is the only answer you are willing to give me.”
I said nothing.
Nikolai’s amusement faded. Aleksei looked into his glass. Sergei watched me the way he watched everything, without blinking, as if silence itself could be interrogated. I did not meet his eyes this time and Maxim noticed.
“You are handling it, I assume,” he said.
“I am.”
“You said that before.”
“It remains true.”
“And if it stops being true?”
“It won’t.”
Nikolai muttered, “That kind of confidence always comes right before someone gets shot at.”
“It is Boston,” Aleksei said. “Someone is always getting shot at.”
“I meant Ivan,” Maxim clarified.
“Ah. Then yes. Probably,” Aleksei replied flatly.
I gave them both a look. “Your concern is overwhelming.”
Nikolai raised his glass. “To your survival. May it be brief enough to be interesting and long enough to be useful.”
“Touching.”
Maxim ignored them. “You will not let pride blind you.”
“No.”
“You will not let curiosity turn into liability.”
“No,” I said again.
Maxim studied me for another long moment. “Mikhail is not careless. If his people are moving again, there is purpose behind it.”
“I’m aware.”
“And if you are withholding information because you believe you can control every piece alone, you are mistaken.”
“I’m aware of that too.”
“Do you?”
That question sat heavier than the others.
I thought of Kit standing at her kitchen window, looking into the dark while I held still on the fire escape.
I thought of her sitting on the couch for two hours without opening her laptop because my presence had unsettled the one constant in her life.
I thought of Orlov analysts working toward finding her name and Mikhail’s shadow stretching across a city that should have been mine to keep away from her.
Then I thought of the pen on my desk.
No.
It wasn’t on my desk.
It was in my jacket again, where I had put it before leaving for the Iron Wolf.
“I know what I’m doing,” I said.
Sergei’s expression did not change, but the silence around him almost seemed to deepen.
Maxim finally looked away, reaching for the bottle. “Then do it faster.”
That, at least, was an order I could obey.
The meeting moved on because empires did not pause for one man’s private disaster.
There were dock payments to discuss, a problem with an insurance policy in the North End, one of Nikolai’s fighters being stupid enough to flirt with a bookmaker’s wife, and an upcoming shipment Aleksei insisted was completely legitimate.
By the time we stood, the mood had loosened enough for Nikolai to complain about hunger.
“You ate an hour ago,” Sergei said.
“That was emotional support food.”
“For what emotion?”
“Being in a meeting.”
Aleksei buttoned his jacket. “Meetings are difficult for him. They require sitting and not hitting anyone.”
“I can sit.”
“You cracked a chair last month.”
“It looked weak.”
I slid my phone into my pocket. “To be fair, that chair had been asking for it.”
Nikolai pointed at me. “See? Ivan understands.”
“I understand structural failure. That is not the same thing as supporting you.”
“You’re all jealous of my strength.”
Sergei moved toward the door. “I am jealous of your ability to survive with so little brain activity.”
Nikolai laughed. “That was definitely a joke.”
Sergei smirked and opened the door. “No. It wasn’t.”
We spilled back into the front room of the Iron Wolf, where music and laughter rose around us like nothing dangerous had been said behind closed doors. Maxim lingered at my side as the others drifted toward the bar.
“You will tell me when I need to know more,” he said.
It was not a question.
“Yes.”
His gaze held mine. “Before it becomes a war.”
That was the problem with Maxim. He could not see a spark without imagining the city burning around it. Unfortunately, he was often correct.
I nodded once. “Before.”
He left me there. Sergei did not, however. He stood a few feet away, hands in his pockets, watching the room as if we were not about to have a conversation. “The relevant street,” he said.
I sighed. “You are going to make this difficult.”
“You already did.”
“I had reasons.”
“You always have reasons.”
“Mine are excellent.”
“That is what makes them dangerous.”
I looked toward the bar, where Nikolai was trying to convince the bartender that a sandwich could be improved by adding more meat than bread.
Aleksei was correcting his argument with far too much seriousness.
Maxim was speaking to one of our men near the entrance, calm and commanding, the Iron Wolf bending around him like he had his own personal sense of gravity.
Family.
The one thing I had never risked lightly.
Sergei said, “Is she in danger?”
I did not ask who he meant. We had both moved beyond the usefulness of pretending.
“Yes.”
His jaw flexed once. “Does she know?”
“Not well enough.”
“Does Maxim know she exists?”
“No.”
Sergei was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “That is a mistake.”
“Possibly.”
“Definitely.”
I smiled faintly. “Your confidence is tedious.”
“Yours may get someone killed.”
I looked at him then. Sergei’s face gave away nothing, but his eyes were not Maxim’s. Maxim looked for betrayal in omissions because he carried the family like a crown and a blade at the same time. Sergei looked for consequences. He saw impact before confession. Blood before the wound opened.
“I bought her time,” I said.
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then buy her more.”
It was the most Sergei-possible answer.
I nodded.
He started to turn away, then stopped. “And Ivan?”
“Yes?”
“If you keep not looking at me when you lie, I will start taking it personally.”
“I would never want to wound your feelings.”
“I don’t have feelings.”
“Everyone says that until Nikolai steals their sandwich.”
His mouth twitched. Barely. Then he walked away.
I stayed at the edge of the Iron Wolf and checked the Orlov feed from my phone. Kara Caldwell’s false address had just been discovered.
Good.
The Orlov analyst had taken the bait.
Also not good, because competent men eventually wondered why bait tasted sweet.
I closed the feed and touched the inside pocket of my jacket.
The pen was still there.
For a moment, the tavern blurred around me. All of it faded behind the image of Kit alone in her apartment, unaware that Mikhail Orlov’s people had reached the edge of her life and that I had spent the entire day shoving them back with both hands.
She did not know I had bought her time.
She did not know how little of it there might be.
She did not know I had lied to my brothers for her either.
I looked toward the door, toward the wet black streets beyond the Iron Wolf, and felt the countdown begin again beneath my ribs.
Seventy-two hours was no longer the problem.
The problem was what I would become before it ran out.