Night of Shadows (Gods of the Night #2)

Chapter 1

Lex

The Job

The basement of Elysium smells like leather, espresso, and something older. The kind of stillness that settles into a room where men have made hard decisions for a long time.

And I’m the only person here.

Nico is upstairs with the Romanos, finishing a meeting that should’ve been done forty minutes ago.

I’ve been sitting in his office reading a federal docket because Nico texted me an hour ago and said to wait.

So, I’m waiting. The docket’s open on his desk.

The whiskey on the side table is mine, untouched.

I’ve stopped drinking before noon. It’s been a year. Most days I do not miss it.

But today is one of the days I miss it.

The door opens. Nico walks in. He’s wearing the suit Mama bought him for Easter. He’s not been to Easter dinner in a while.

"Lex."

"How were the Romanos?"

"They were Romanos." He sets a folder on the desk between us. Heavy and federal. "I have a job for you."

I don’t pick up the folder. I read his face instead. Nico's face doesn’t give away much, but I’ve been reading it for thirty-five years. I can see what he’s preparing to ask me before he asks it.

"You want me to babysit."

"I want you to protect a federal witness until they testify before the grand jury. Then we re-evaluate."

"Send Petrov."

"Petrov runs the operation. I need you on the principal."

"Why?"

Nico sits down across from me and doesn’t answer right away. That’s also a tell. The Romanos meeting didn’t run forty minutes long. Nico ran the Romanos meeting forty minutes long because he didn’t want to walk into this room until he had the words he wanted to use on me.

"Because the contract is from Nikolai."

The whiskey on the side table is suddenly more interesting.

"Nikolai Reznikov," he says, in case I’ve forgotten the name.

I have not forgotten the name. "Viktor's cousin.

The old man's blood, working on the East Coast. He’s put a hundred thousand on the witness's head, and he wants it to feel personal.

He told the contractor to do it slowly. To do it where her people can see it. "

"Her people."

"She’s Irish American. South End. Her people are not Cormac's people, but they’re people Cormac respects. He called me this morning. He asked me, as a personal favor, to put my best man on her detail."

"Cormac has men."

"Cormac asked for you."

I look at the folder. The folder has a name. The name on the folder is one I knew before Nico walked into this room. I knew the way a man knows the name of a song he’s not heard in three years but hasn’t been able to forget.

Maeve Callahan.

My body stills. My mouth stays shut. The folder stays where it is. I do this so well that Nico doesn’t see me do it, which is to say I do it badly, because Nico is the only person who has ever seen me do anything.

He says, "What?"

"Nothing."

"Lex."

"It is nothing."

He waits. Nico's wait should be filed as a weapon. I have watched him wheedle confessions out of other men. I have watched him wait Reznikov soldiers into giving up locations they swore they would die for. I have, on occasion, watched him wait for me.

I pick up the folder and open it.

She’s wearing a gray suit in the photograph, taken outside the federal courthouse three weeks ago. Hair shorter than I remember. Eyes the same. She’s holding the strap of a leather bag the way someone might hold a knife.

Behind the photograph is a second sheet.

Maeve Callahan, thirty-one. Intellectual property attorney, Boylston Street firm. Witness to the execution of a federal informant in a parking garage on Tremont Street six months ago. The informant was a Reznikov associate whose body was found two days later with his tongue cut out.

Behind the second sheet, then the third, a child.

Maeve Callahan has a daughter.

The federal protection order names them both. Maeve Callahan and a minor child, age two, sealed identity per the court. The photograph behind it is small, taken from a distance. A daycare drop-off. A small girl in a red jacket holding a stuffed elephant, her mother's hand on her back.

I look at the date on the federal order. I look at the daughter's age.

I do the math twice because the first time I do it, I’m sitting in my brother’s office in the basement of a Boston nightclub, and the floor has tilted.

My right hand, on the folder, has stopped being steady.

Two. She’s two.

The Boston gala was three years ago.

"Lex."

Nico's voice. Far away.

"Lex."

I close the folder. I do this very carefully because if I don’t, I’ll break something on his desk.

"When does it start?"

Nico looks at me for a long moment. He’s not seen what I just saw.

He’s read the file. He knows the witness has a child.

He doesn’t know the math. He doesn’t know the gala.

There’s a version of my life where he never finds out, because I’m very good at making sure my brother finds out only what I let him find out, and I’ve been doing that for years.

"Tonight," he says. "You'll meet Petrov at her building at eight. She knows someone is coming. She doesn’t know who."

"Eight."

"Lex. Are you all right?”

"I am fine."

"You are not."

"I am fine," I say, in the voice that has ended conversations in this office for years. Nico looks at me. He doesn’t press.

I stand, taking the folder. I don’t look at the photograph again because if I do, I will not leave this office for an hour, and I have a meeting with Petrov in four.

"Lex."

I stop in the doorway, but don’t turn around. "Yes?"

"Whatever this is. I trust you with it."

I stand in the doorway of my brother's office at half past two on a Tuesday afternoon in November, holding a federal folder containing a photograph of a woman I haven’t been able to stop thinking about for three years, and a child I could be the father of.

And my brother, who has trusted me with everything he loves, has just told me he trusts me with this.

I don't deserve it. I take it anyway.

"Eight," I say.

And then close the door.

? ? ?

In the parking garage, I sit in the SUV with the engine off and my hands on the wheel.

I’m cataloging which weapons go in the car—except I’m not. It’s really about what I’m going to see when I get there. Her.

She’s going to open the door. She’s going to see me.

And then whatever happens after that will happen.

I’ll come face-to-face with whatever she’s been carrying for three years.

Whatever she’s been doing alone. Whatever she’s built in the small apartment with the leather bag and the gray suit and the daughter who is almost three years old and holds a stuffed elephant on the way to daycare.

I’m about to walk into the middle of it.