Chapter 6 #2
We climbed the scaffold together. The aluminum rungs rang under our shoes.
At the sixteen-foot platform, the damage was visible — six floorboards buckled along the grain, the original quarter-sawn oak warped beyond saving.
I knelt and pressed my thumb into the edge of the worst board. It gave. Spongy. Done.
“The supplier’s sending European oak,” Dwayne called from below. “Same dimensions.”
“He’s sending you European oak at quarter-sawn prices?”
“That’s what the invoice says.”
“Quarter-sawn white oak. American. If he ships European, I’ll reject the delivery and charge him the delay.”
I pulled out my phone and called the supplier. He answered on the second ring. I could hear his warehouse in the background — forklifts, shouting, the beep of reversing trucks.
“Phil. Ksenia Orlova. Harbor House.”
“Ksenia, I was going to call you. The quarter-sawn is back-ordered. I’ve got a beautiful European alternative—”
“No.”
“It’s the same dimensions. Same grade. Actually, the grain is tighter—”
“Phil. The spec is quarter-sawn white oak, American, rift and quartered. It’s in the contract.
It’s in the restoration plan filed with the landmarks commission.
If you substitute European oak, I will reject the delivery, file a breach of contract, and find another supplier by Friday.
You will eat the delay cost and the reordering fee. ”
Silence on the line.
“American quarter-sawn. Tomorrow. Or I make the call today.”
“I’ll get it done, Ksenia.”
“Thank you.”
I hung up. Zoe was grinning.
“What?”
“Nothing. I just enjoy watching you eviscerate people over wood grain.”
“It’s not about wood grain. It’s about specifications being met.”
“It’s about wood grain and you know it.”
I changed into the flats I had left in my site office.
I rearranged the work schedule — plaster removal moved up, floor replacement sequenced after substrate inspection, finishing pushed back three days to accommodate the corrected delivery.
Dwayne made notes without argument. The crew adjusted. The project held.
Then Ilya stepped in front of the scaffold entrance.
“Ms. Orlova. I need to clear the structure before you go back up.”
“You watched me climb it twenty minutes ago.”
“Mr. Sokolov’s instructions require—”
“Mr. Sokolov’s instructions do not cover my site safety protocols. I have been climbing scaffolds since I was twenty-three. I have never had an incident. The structure was erected by a licensed contractor and inspected this morning by Dwayne, who has thirty years of experience. Step aside.”
Ilya did not step aside. He reached for his radio.
He spoke into it. I heard the crackle of response. Then he held the radio toward me.
“He wants to speak with you.”
I took it. My jaw was tight.
“Daniil.”
“Ksenia.” His voice came through the small speaker, calm and unhurried. “Do you consider the structure safe?”
I blinked.
“Yes.”
“Then Ilya follows your instructions inside the site.”
A pause.
“Is there anything else?”
“No.”
“Good. I’ll see you this evening.”
The radio went dead. I handed it back to Ilya, who looked faintly confused, as though the universe had deviated from a script he had memorized.
“Ms. Orlova,” he said. “I’ll follow your instructions inside the site.”
“Thank you, Ilya. You can stand near the east entrance. It has the best sightlines.”
He moved without further protest.
I stood at the base of the scaffold and stared at the radio in Ilya’s hand. He had asked. Not ordered. Not overridden. Not used my safety as a pretext for control. He had asked whether I considered the structure safe, taken my answer, and deferred.
Zoe appeared at my elbow with two cups of coffee.
“Was that your terrifying husband on the radio?”
“He asked whether the scaffold was safe.”
“And?”
“I said yes. And he told Ilya to follow my instructions.”
Zoe handed me the coffee. She waited.
I drank. The coffee was too hot and slightly bitter and exactly what I needed.
“So,” Zoe said. “The wedding night.”
“No.”
“Ksenia.”
“Zoe, no.”
“I bought you a dress. I stood in a church. I watched you marry a man you have wanted for years. I am owed details. Lurid details.”
“You are owed nothing.”
“I am owed something. A crumb? A fragment? A single adjectival phrase?”
I looked at her. She looked back with the particular patience of a woman who had known me for seven years and could wait longer than I could resist.
“He found me Little.”
Zoe’s eyes widened.
“When?”
“That night. After the wedding. I was in the sitting room. He came downstairs for water.”
“And?”
“And he made me macaroni and hot chocolate and sat in the armchair across the room until I fell asleep.”
Zoe opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
“You married a Bratva Pakhan,” she said, “and your first intimate experience involved pasta and a stuffed rabbit.”
“It wasn’t intimate.”
“He saw you holding a stuffed rabbit and made you dinner.”
“It was macaroni from a box.”
“It was care, Ksenia.”
“It was practical. He saw a problem and solved it. That’s what he does. He’s efficient.”
“He’s efficient?”
“Yes.”
“Your terrifying husband saw you in your most vulnerable state and his response was to cook for you and then sit quietly across the room and guard you while you slept.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re telling me this means nothing.”
“It means he’s strategic.”
Zoe stared at me.
“Honey,” she said. “I love you. But you are full of shit.”
My phone buzzed. I looked at the screen.
Daniil.
Volna reopens tonight. Will you accompany me?
Not: You are coming. Not: Be ready at seven. Will you.
If he had ordered me, I could have gone as a duty. As the Pakhan’s wife performing a political function. As the Orlov daughter fulfilling her role in the alliance.
But he had asked.
And saying yes to a question felt like something else entirely.
I typed: What time?
Seven. I’ll send the car?
Yes.
I put the phone away. Zoe was watching me with the expression of a woman who had already drawn conclusions and was generously allowing me to reach them at my own pace.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face is saying plenty.”
“My face is a neutral surface.”
“Your face is a fucking neon-lit billboard.”
She grinned. I finished my coffee and went back to the scaffold, and if my hand was less steady on the rungs than it had been that morning, neither Dwayne nor Zoe nor Ilya mentioned it.
Volna’s lower restaurant had been repainted.
The walls were the same warm amber, the same dark wainscoting, the same brass fixtures throwing light across crystal and silver.
But the plaster near the east corridor entrance was new—fractionally lighter, the paint one shade less aged than the surrounding walls. They had patched the bullet holes.
I stood in the entrance and looked at that patch of wall and thought about the sound a body makes when it hits the floor.
The guard at the east stair. I had not known his name then.
I had learned it later. Petya. Petya Vlasov.
Twenty-six years old. He had a position at the east stair and a weapon he never drew.
Daniil waited at the bottom of the stairs.
He wore a dark suit—charcoal, single-breasted, fitted across the shoulders in a way that made the fabric move with him rather than against him. White shirt. No tie. His dark hair was combed back from his forehead. The line of his jaw caught the amber light from the restaurant.
He looked up as I descended.
I had chosen a dark green dress. Not the one from before—that one still hung in my closet with my father’s blood dried into the fabric, and I could not bring myself to throw it away and could not bring myself to look at it.
This was a different dress. Darker green.
Higher neckline. Long sleeves. Fitted through the waist and hips.
Daniil extended his arm. Not his hand reaching for mine—his arm, bent at the elbow, offered. An invitation I could accept or decline without creating a scene.
I took it.
His sleeve was warm under my fingers. The muscle beneath the fabric was solid.
I felt the controlled strength of him as we walked—the way he moved without excess, each step placed with the certainty of a man who had already assessed every entrance, exit, and face in the room before I reached the bottom of the stairs.
The restaurant was full.
Sokolov captains occupied the long tables on the east side.
Orlov men filled the west. Union representatives sat near the bar.
Freight clients clustered near the windows.
Community figures—the dentist who had treated Lev before he died, the old woman who ran the newsstand on Brighton Fourth, the priest from Holy Protection—occupied the spaces between.
Every face turned toward us.
Daniil led me to the first group. Sokolov captains, mostly older men who had served Lev for decades. They stood when we approached. Some of them looked at me the way men look at a new piece of furniture—assessing whether it belonged, whether it would last, whether it had been worth the price.
“Ksenia Orlova,” Daniil said. “My wife.”
Ksenia Orlova—the name on my license, my contracts, my professional correspondence. The name under which I had built a career that existed entirely outside the room I was standing in.
He had preserved it deliberately. In front of men who would have understood the name change as absorption—the Orlov daughter becoming Sokolov property—he had given me back my name.
I inclined my head to the captains. I shook hands. I remembered names, wives, children, operations. I asked about a knee surgery. I congratulated a promotion. I expressed sympathy for a recent loss. Each man left the exchange looking slightly more comfortable than he had entered it.
That was what I did.