Chapter 24
GAbrIEL
When she comes downstairs in a fitted dress of black silk, her hair pinned up, I forget about every damn tactical thought I had.
She looks like a pakhan’s daughter.
She looks like who she is.
I can’t say with total certainty how the meeting is going to go. The council is meant to be peaceful, a place where some of the deadliest men in the city can speak without fear of open reprisal.
But tonight all bets are off. No weapons are allowed at the meeting—technically—but I’m going to be ready for anything.
Outside, the weather is miserable. It’s a cold late spring evening, rain hammering the city. The streets are slick and black, headlights flashing off puddles.
We’re seated in the back of my bulletproof limo, moving through Manhattan at a crawl, the traffic backed up from the crowd from some Broadway show spilling into the street despite the weather.
Thea is beside me. There is at least six inches of space between us, which I know she needs. She’s bent over the folder that Amanda delivered this morning. It’s full of documents, records, photographs—everything we’ll need to prove to the council that Thea is who she is.
I watch her as she reads, as her fingers trace the birth certificate. Teodora Fetisova. Born in Brooklyn, October 14. Mother: Masha Fetisova. Father: Lev Fetisov.
Her handwriting is small and precise as she takes copious notes. It reminds me of her father, how he’d always bring his little black notebook to our meetings, jotting down whatever he thought was important. Her mind works just like his; I’m seeing it more and more.
She turns another page and stills. It’s a photograph.
I know which one—I’ve looked at it many times. It’s a family photograph from a 1999 Christmas party at the Fetisov home, Lev and Masha standing with their three children.
Thea stares at the photo for a long time.
“That’s me,” she says quietly.
“Yes.”
“I have my mother’s eyes.”
“You do.”
“And my father’s—” She touches the photograph. Lev was forty-one years old. He’s laughing in the picture. He was tall and broad-shouldered, the kind of man who took up space without intending to. “His smile.”
I say nothing. Then she raises her eyes to me.
“What was he like? I don’t remember much.”
I sit back, letting the memories wash over me. I watch as the rainfall hits against the windows, Lev appearing in my mind’s eye.
“He was serious. More than a little intimidating to an upstart like me. But when it came to his children, he was a different man entirely—perhaps the real Lev. He was less like the cold, ruthless pakhan that the whole city feared and more like a teddy bear.”
She smiles.
“And he was a good man. You may not think men like us have honor, but many do. And he was one of them. He was also brilliant.”
I sigh. I’d always thought it was a sick joke that a good man like Lev could be taken by scum like Kolya.
The limo moves through traffic, and before too long, I spot our destination up ahead.
“I’ll tell you more about the rest of your family,” I say. “But such a conversation isn’t for the moments before what we’re tasked with tonight.”
Her smile fades and she nods.
I watch as she turns another page, revealing a police report from the night of the massacre. I’d almost stopped Amanda from including it, but Thea had insisted on knowing everything. All of it. Even the ugly parts.
She reads it slowly. I watch her expression shift to horror, then grief. Then anger. Then rage.
“He came to the house,” she says suddenly.
I cock my head to the side. “What?”
“Before the massacre.” She closes her eyes. “Kolya. He came to the house. I remember now.”
I say nothing, not wanting to disturb the memory.
“I remember he and my dad argued,” she continues.
She opens her eyes. Her voice and gaze are both distant, as if she’s following a thread that only she can see.
“I was on the stairs. I wasn’t supposed to be there.
I didn’t understand the words, but I remember the tone of Dad’s voice.
He was angry—angry in a way I’d never seen.
And he seemed afraid, which scared me because I’d never seen him like that either. ”
“Do you remember what Kolya said?”
She shakes her head. “No, I don’t. But I remember the way I felt.
I was cold and scared.” She turns her attention to me.
“Green eyes. I remember his green eyes. I remember the way he looked at me as he left, like he knew I had been there the entire time, like he knew something I didn’t.
I hated it. The second he’d put his eyes on me, I’d wanted them off. ”
I reach out and cover her hand with mine. She doesn’t pull away.
“There’s one more,” I say quietly.
She turns to the last page. It’s another photograph, this one smaller and slightly blurred. It’s of a woman and two little girls—one of them Thea. They’re standing outside a brownstone somewhere in Brooklyn.
It’s Liza’s house the morning after.
I barely remember this day,” she says. “I remember the strangeness of the house, wondering where my family was. But everything else is a blur.”
I tighten my grip on her hand. The limo slows.
“Where are we?” she asks, craning her head to look out the window.
“The Apthorp, where the council is being held.”
The building emerges through the rain—an entire city block of Beaux-Arts architectural limestone on Broadway and West 79th, over a hundred years old. One of the most storied addresses in the city.
But most importantly, it’s private and discreet. The kind of place where powerful men have conducted dangerous conversations for over a century.
The Bratva has kept a private room on the second floor for decades.
The limo stops and the driver opens the door for us, holding a large umbrella. I exit, offering my hand to her. She takes it and climbs out beside me.
She looks extraordinary, powerful, even. Like a woman walking toward something she was always meant to face.
“Ready?” I ask.
She exhales sharply, then looks up at the building.
“No,” she admits, “I’m not. But I’m doing it anyway.”
I can’t help but smile at her response.
“Good.”
Then she turns to me, and something in her expression makes my chest ache.
“If this goes wrong—” she starts.
“It won’t.”
“But if it does—”
I cut her off with a quick kiss, hard and certain, right there on the sidewalk, with the rain coming down and the city roaring around us.
When I pull back, she blinks.
“It won’t go wrong,” I tell her.
I take her hand and we walk into the building together.