Chapter 21 - Darya
As if the universe—or Gloriana, since she’s the one who brought me the project—brings me a gift for my perseverance, in the form of an altarpiece that makes my breath catch in my lungs at first sight.
Today, I’m working on the gold leaf. That means I have no reason to move and get to breathe through every atom of my attention being focused on a gilded border the width of my thumb, because gold leaf applied over a damaged surface requires a touch so delicate that it doesn’t allow for any unnecessary distractions.
To be careful with this relic of a time long ago, I have to set aside the impetuous grief that’s been consuming me and devote myself to the preservation of something extraordinary. I get to act as its keeper.
There’s a sacredness to this conversation between the gold, the breath I’m holding, and my careful but steady hands.
I’m so lost in the process that it nearly knocks me off my stool when I feel someone behind me. Irate, I look over my shoulder. Filip idles in the doorway. He looks too hesitant for me to snap over the interruption.
I sigh. “Whatever it is, can it wait?”
The disgruntled glance he darts in peripheral view is answer enough for me. Whatever it is, apparently, absolutely cannot wait.
I set down the gilder’s tip.
“Someone’s here,” Filip says.
I shake my head, disagreeing. “I have no appointments today.”
“Yes.” A beat. “I told him that.”
Now I look up.
His face is composed, as it always is, but there’s something careful in his eyes. His chin tilts almost imperceptibly toward the front of the studio.
“Is he in the waiting area?”
“He declined to wait in the waiting area. With a gun.”
I reach for my phone. I set the gilder’s tip precisely parallel to the edge of the worktable.
I look at the Madonna one more time—at her downturned face, her patient, painted grief—and I think, Look at her, she’s survived five hundred years of people making poor decisions around her.
Whatever is at the front of my atelier will survive the next five minutes.
“I’ll handle it,” I tell Filip.
I forget, sometimes, that guns scare regular people.
That’s the life of a Bratva princess, though, isn’t it?
***
I didn’t think the thing I had to handle would be Boris Zakharov, standing in the middle of my reception area with his stick in one hand, examining the framed provenance documents on the walls with the expression of a man who finds them mildly puzzling and has no particular interest in resolving the puzzle.
He looks exactly as he always does: weathered, immovable, ornery.
A man with a chip on his shoulder that’s so big, it’s no wonder he needs a stick to walk.
I don’t feel bad for that uncharitable thought.
My poor archivist, Javier, is stationed between him and the hallway, with the expression of someone who has said no several times and has been very firmly informed that no is not an option. He looks relieved when he sees me.
“Mr. Zakharov,” I say. “You should’ve called ahead.”
I don’t add, So I could’ve pretended we’re closed. So I could enjoy not having to look at your mean, ugly face.
“I don’t call ahead,” Boris says. As if this is simply a fact about himself, like his eye color or the limp he walks with.
“In that case, I should tell you that I don’t do unscheduled visits.” I look at Javier. “Thank you. I’ve got it from here.”
He retreats with what I recognize as grateful haste. I don’t blame him.
“Your boy tried to turn me away,” he accuses.
“Yes. He’s well-trained,” I say, a cold smile curving my mouth. “I heard he had some persuasion applied to him. He mentioned the appearance of a firearm.”
Boris is unrepentant. “I showed it to him. I wouldn’t have if words were effective.”
“I also have a gun, Mr. Zakharov. So, I’d recommend you stick to your words, insofar as I deign to listen to them.” I hold his gaze. “If I pull mine out, I’ll be shooting your knees. Those are the only wiles I need. Do we understand each other?”
If I didn’t know better, I’d say my bluntness earns me a moment of shining respect in his eyes. An acknowledgment of a quality he hadn’t expected to encounter, and may quietly revise his assumptions in light of it. What are the chances?
His chin dips slightly. The world’s most grudging concession.
“Shall we?” I gesture toward the hallway, away from the reception, back inside my office.
I don’t offer him a seat. There’s only the chair in front of my writing desk and the stool I like to work on. Extraneous furniture is just clutter in the restoration room; it’s purposefully not designed for visitors.
There is, however, a high worktable, state-of-the-art lighting, and the tools of a very particular trade laid out with the precision I require of everything in this space. If he feels inclined to be impressed.
If not, there’s always the altarpiece, which I had to leave under the raking light. I can see that it catches Boris’ eye. With Madonna’s gilded border catching the light and throwing it back in fragments, I understand.
With a hefty exhale, I sink back down onto my stool. I pull my magnification glasses back on. I pick up the gilder’s tip. “So,” I say, more a resignation than an invitation. “What words have you brought to me?”
I make a good show of busying my hands again.
But the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention, hyperaware of this man’s presence in my space. There’s a difference between tossing out a power move and being deluded enough to fall under hubris’ spell. I have no plans for the latter.
I fight the primal urge to wrap my arm around my stomach to protect it from his attention.
Boris makes his way toward the worktable, slowly, his stick finding the floor.
He stops on the other side of it and looks at the panel.
Whatever he was expecting to find in this room, I don’t think it was this.
He looks at it for longer than I’d anticipate from a man who doesn’t call ahead and carries a loaded gun to art studios.
“What is this?” he asks.
“Fifteenth-century Italian. A Madonna. She was part of a triptych once. Unfortunately, the other panels are gone.” I keep my eyes on the gold leaf border, the gilder’s tip poised. “Someone made a mess of her. I’m trying to undo it.”
I feel him look at me when I say that.
I won’t give him anything in return.
“You’ve left the manor,” he says.
“You noticed? I’m touched.”
“The optics are poor.” His voice is measured.
Dispassionate. The voice of a man presenting a case he’s already decided the conclusion of.
“You understand that, I imagine. This alliance is being watched, not just by people with a vested interest in its success, but also by people who are very interested in its failure. Your absence reads as a fracture. A fracture invites pressure. That will not do.”
“I grew up in a Bratva family,” I say. “The mechanics of perception management aren’t new to me. If the optics concern you, I’d start with the man who created the circumstances for my absence.”
Boris makes a sound, deep in his throat. It sounds like a growl. It’s an oddly graceless sound for a relatively regal-looking man. “My nephew is difficult.”
“No,” I say. “He’s worse.”
I’m working on a section of lifted gold leaf in the upper border, where the original adhesive has failed, and the leaf is threatening to separate entirely from the ground beneath it.
It requires a consolidant applied with a brush no wider than two hairs, then the breath held, then the waiting. I apply it now.
I hold my breath.
Boris fills up the slot of quiet I’ve left open for him, certain he’ll get around to the real point of his being here sooner or later. Give him room to speak, and he’ll talk and talk. Give him enough rope, and he’ll hang himself with it. Though maybe that’s wishful thinking.”
“He lost a wife,” he says. “His first wife. Irina.”
My hands are perfectly still. They have to be.
“Yes. I know about Irina,” I say.
“You know about the rumors. You know very little. He doesn’t talk about her; we all know this.
” He doesn’t say this unkindly. But there’s a gleam in his eyes I don’t trust one bit.
“She was the love of his life. He was a different man before losing her—younger, certainly, but more prone to taking bigger swings. He was less conversant in his approaches.” A pause.
“She died in a way that wasn’t simple. A pregnancy had complications no one knew about until it was too late to know.
He was there for all of it. And then the child—a girl, but still—she didn’t make it either.
” His voice doesn’t change its register. That, somehow, makes it worse.
I exhale slowly, so it doesn’t disturb the leaf.
All that’s disturbed is me. Every word Boris conspiratorially divulges to me then proceeds to lodge itself in the tender place I’ve been keeping padded and protected all week, and it stays there, where I fear it will remain and be rotting when I wake up tomorrow. Alone, again.
I duck my head, not wanting him to catch a glimpse of whatever emotions my face betrays. I’m not keen to give any Zakharov any part of me.
“I’m telling you this,” Boris continues, “because you should understand what you’re dealing with.
This arrangement between you has its benefits, evidently.
The alliance has held. He functions better.
” Something almost dry enters his voice.
“His mother is apparently insufferably pleased. But what happened in that office—his reaction—that isn’t a man who doesn’t care.
That’s a man who was terrified. And in men like my nephew, terror comes out as distance.
As silence. As exactly what you experienced. ”
He stops.
The raking light hums its low electrical hum. The Madonna looks at the space where her child used to be.
I set down the gilder’s tip.
I take off my magnification glasses.
I look at Boris Zakharov across the worktable, across five centuries of survived damage and bad decisions and irreversible carelessness, and I think about what it means that he’s here.
Whether it’s manipulation or genuine concern or both at once, I can’t entirely parse.
Probably both. Boris is not a man with simple motives, and I’ve never been a woman foolish enough to take a simple reading of a complicated person.
But he’s said the thing. Whether he meant it to matter or only meant it to move me, it matters.
Irina was the love of his life.
I reach for my brush.
“I appreciate your concern,” I say. Smooth. Even. I’m proud of myself for never relinquishing the reins to this man. I’m even prouder that my courteous nature doesn’t dilute my dislike. It’s a talent to walk a tightrope like this, and I can do it. “I’ll be sure to take it under advisement.”