Chapter 5
Rovin
The call comes on a Tuesday morning.
I’m in the car, heading to a meeting in the City, when my phone rings. The number is private, but the voice on the other end is immediately recognizable, because I make it my business to recognize the voices of everyone who has ever attempted to interfere with my operations.
"Mr. Mostovoi. This is Edward Hartley."
I signal to the driver to pull over. He does, smoothly, easing the car to the curb on a quiet street. I press the phone against my ear and listen to the sound of a ruined man breathing.
"Mr. Hartley."
"I understand my daughter is living with you."
"Your understanding is correct."
A pause. The sound of ice clinking in a glass. It is ten in the morning.
"I don't know what she's told you," he says, "but Claudia is not who she presents herself as. She is manipulative, she is opportunistic, and she is using you for protection and money, exactly the way she used me."
I look out the window. The street is grey and wet. A woman walks past with a pram, leaning into the drizzle.
"She used you," I say. "How?"
"She was involved in my business dealings. The dinners, the connections, the meetings with the companies. She knew what was happening and she participated. When the investigation started, she positioned herself as innocent to save her own skin. She threw me to the wolves."
"That's interesting," I say. "Because the investigation reports, which I obtained and read thoroughly before I brought her into my home, indicate that you instructed your daughter to attend those dinners in a representational capacity.
She shook hands and made conversation. She did not negotiate contracts, sign documents, or have access to the financial arrangements that constitute the basis of the charges against you. "
Silence. More ice clinking.
"Furthermore," I continue, "the journalists who implicated her have since published retractions buried in the back pages of their respective publications, retractions I suspect you are unaware of because you appear to have been otherwise occupied."
"She's my daughter. I know her better than—"
"You know nothing about her." My voice doesn't rise.
It drops, and the temperature in the car seems to drop with it.
"You know the version of her that served your career.
You know the photographs they put on the front pages.
You don't know the woman who walked into a room full of dangerous men and chose the most dangerous one, not out of desperation, but because she understood exactly what she wanted. "
"Listen to me—"
"No, Mr Hartley. You listen to me. Carefully.
Claudia is under my protection now. My name, my resources, my authority.
If you contact her, I will know. If you attempt to use her to negotiate your legal difficulties, I will know.
If your name appears in any context that causes her discomfort, distress, or inconvenience, I will respond in a manner that makes your current legal troubles feel like a parking ticket. "
The silence on the other end is dense and absolute.
"She doesn't belong to you anymore," I say. "She belongs to me. And I take care of what is mine."
I end the call.
I sit in the back of the car for a moment, letting the adrenaline settle. Then I call Claudia.
She answers on the second ring. "Hey."
"Your father called me."
“Okay.” A beat. "What did he say?"
"He attempted to discredit you. He suggested you were complicit in his crimes and that you're using me for protection."
"And what did you say?"
"I told him you're under my protection and that he should never contact you again."
Another pause, longer this time. When she speaks, her voice is different. Smaller. Not weak, Claudia doesn't do weak, but quieter, as though she has pulled herself inward to process the thing that hurts.
"He called you to warn you about me."
"Yes."
"And you didn't believe him."
"I believe what I see, Claudia. I see a woman who chose a difficult path because it was honest. I see someone who has not flinched once since the night I met her.
Your father is a man who got caught with his hands in the cookie jar and then blamed his daughter when the shit hit the fan. He is irrelevant."
I hear her breathe. One long, controlled breath, the kind people take when they're trying not to cry.
"Thank you," she says.
"I don't want your gratitude. I want you to be ready for dinner tonight. My brothers and their…fiancées are coming. We're discussing the weddings."
"Okay." She says it so quietly I almost miss it.
"Claudia."
"Yes."
"You're safe. Do you hear me? Whatever he is, whatever he's done, it cannot touch you. Not anymore. Not here with me."
"I hear you."
I end the call and tell the driver to take me to my meeting. But for the rest of the drive, I think about the sound of her voice when she said thank you, and the way it cracked at the edges, and the rage that is building in my chest like a weather system.
Edward Hartley has spent his life using his daughter as currency. First for his career. Now for his defense.
I make a mental note to ensure that his trial proceeds without interference. And then I make another note, private, unspoken, held in the part of me that my brothers call dangerous and my enemies call inevitable.
If he contacts her again, the trial will be the least of his concerns.