14. Mikhail
MIKHAIL
I do not follow Taylor when she leaves the dance floor.
That is important. It’s the sort of distinction a man makes when he’s already guilty and looking for technical innocence.
I do not follow her. I do not cross the room. I do not take the phone from her hand, erase the boy’s number, and ask whether she truly believes a man like that can protect her from anything, including himself.
Nikolai laughs as he walks toward two friends, phone in hand, blond hair falling carelessly across his forehead in the way young men allow when they’re convinced their faces make carelessness charming.
One of his friends claps him on the shoulder and says something that makes all three of them laugh.
I don’t hear the words. I don’t need to.
I see his thumb move over the phone screen. I imagine Taylor’s name there. I sit at the table with a drink in my hand and watch her pretend not to look for me. She’s very bad at pretending.
She laughs with Viktoriya. She checks her phone once. Then again. She saves the number. That’s the part that almost does it. Not the dancing. Not his hand on her waist. Not the way he leaned too close to hear her over the music. The number. The neat little proof that she means to continue this.
Good, I think. This is what I wanted. A man her age. A normal man. An ordinary flirtation in a loud bar after work. This is exactly what a better man would hope for. Unfortunately, I am not a better man.
When Taylor returns to the table, her face is bright even with uncertainty rippling beneath it.
Viktoriya has one arm linked through hers, and Katya has attached herself to the other side, saying something that makes them both laugh.
Viktoriya has taken Taylor under her wing already.
She knows more than she should somehow—a clever girl.
I seem to be surrounded by those lately.
The table greets Taylor with exaggerated applause and a few low whistles. She blushes deeply, trying not to look my way and failing, her eyes slipping toward me as if they’re magnetized.
“You kids have fun,” I say, standing and pulling my loosened tie back into place before shrugging on my jacket.
They all turn toward me. “You are leaving already, Governor Korolev?” Viktoriya asks.
“Yes. It’s too late for me. I am an old man, after all.” I lift one hand when Dima opens his mouth to protest. “Stay. Have another round on me.” I turn to Taylor. “Miss Hayes, I hope your evening continues to be productive.”
She stiffens, unsure how to take the comment. Viktoriya’s fingers tighten around her arm, something no one else would notice if they weren’t looking for it.
I leave before I say anything worse.
The air outside hits me like a wall. It pinches my nostrils and cuts into my eyes, finding every last opening in my clothing. Pavel is waiting at the curb with the car. He opens the rear door without asking why I’m leaving alone.
“Drive two streets over,” I tell him.
He looks at me once through the mirror after I get inside. “Home?”
“No,” I say. He waits. “Park where you can see the entrance.”
Pavel’s expression doesn’t change. He pulls away from the curb and takes us around the block, stopping beneath a dead streetlamp with a clear view of the bar.
I sit in the back seat and watch the entrance.
I made the decision before I left the table.
My body knows it even while my mind continues pretending there are other possibilities.
I could tell Pavel to drive. I could go home.
I could check on my mother. I could go to the warehouse and speak to the six men who allowed Orlov to use my roads.
Instead, I watch a door. My phone rings after half an hour.
Arkady. I answer without looking away from the bar. “What?”
“We have all six.”
“And?”
“Three deny speaking to anyone. Two are blaming each other. The last one has a second phone registered under his brother’s name.”
That should have my full attention.
One of my men may have told Orlov enough to put strangers at my mother’s gate. The second phone may contain the answer. Men are waiting for instructions because they know acting without them could be fatal.
The bar door opens. A couple steps outside laughing. Neither of them is Nikolai.
“Search it,” I say.
“We already did. There are calls to a number connected to Orlov’s transport office. I thought you would want to be here before we question him.”
“Not now.”
Silence follows. Arkady knows better than to ask what could possibly be more important. “Pakhan—”
“I said not now. Keep them separated. No one speaks to him until I arrive.” I end the call before he can answer and place the phone face down beside me.
Pavel’s eyes meet mine briefly in the rearview mirror, then return to the entrance.
The bar door opens again twenty minutes later, and this time Taylor steps outside with Viktoriya, Katya, Dima, and Alina gathered around her.
She has her coat buttoned crookedly and her purse trapped beneath one arm.
Dima says something that makes her laugh, but he’s looking at Viktoriya when he says it.
Viktoriya rolls her eyes and takes his scarf from around his neck, wrapping it around her own before he can protest.
Taylor looks up and down the street.
For one irrational second, I think she’s looking for me.
Then a taxi pulls to the curb. Katya and Alina climb into the back, and Taylor hesitates beside the open door while Viktoriya says something near her ear. Taylor’s face changes. Her mouth tightens, and she glances back toward the bar before shaking her head.
I wonder if Viktoriya is asking about me.
I wonder what Taylor says.
I could lower the window. I could call her name. I could tell Pavel to follow the taxi and make certain she reaches home safely. The order is already waiting behind my teeth.
Instead, I watch her slide into the car. Viktoriya closes the door behind her, then steps back beside Dima. He places one hand at the small of Viktoriya’s back as the taxi pulls away, and she allows it without even looking at him.
Taylor disappears around the corner. I should leave now. She is gone. Nikolai cannot touch her tonight. Whatever threat I invented has ended.
“Drive,” I tell Pavel. His hand shifts toward the ignition. I look back at the entrance. “Wait.” Pavel’s hand goes still. Neither of us says anything.
Nearly two hours later, the door opens again. Nikolai steps outside with two friends, his voice carrying across the street. He is confident, happy, a little drunk, tired. The three of them sing part of an old bar song as they walk, their voices echoing through the mostly empty streets.
“Follow them,” I say. Pavel starts the car.
We remain far enough back that they don’t notice us.
Nikolai and his friends walk for several blocks before stopping beneath a streetlight.
One friend embraces him. The other claps him on the shoulder.
Nikolai lifts one hand in farewell and turns alone into the narrow street beside a closed pharmacy.
“Stop.”
Pavel pulls to the curb. I open the door. He looks at my hands once. He knows what they are for. “Governor—”
“Wait here.” I step into the cold before he can say anything else.
The street isn’t an alley, but it’s close enough. Moscow has many spaces like this, half-public and half-forgotten. Service doors. Dumpsters. Bad lighting. Enough foot traffic to keep a man careless, not enough to keep him safe.
Nikolai is still looking at his phone when I say his name. “Nikolai.”
He turns. For a second, he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing. Rich men do not usually wait for boys like him in dark side streets.
His expression changes from confusion to recognition, then settles into a tentative mixture of both. “Ah. The unfortunate boss.”
Taylor gave him that phrase. The knowledge drops like lead into my stomach.
His smile appears before he can stop it. I watch him decide what kind of story this is. The important man warning him away. The jealous boss. The powerful older suitor. Perhaps he thinks it will become something funny to tell his friends tomorrow. He is wrong.
“Come to tell me to stay away from Taylor?” he asks.
Her name in his mouth removes the last clean thought from my head.
“You asked for her number.”
He lifts both hands slightly. “She gave it to me.”
I step closer. His smile falters.
“That is not what I said.”
“No. I mean, yes, I asked. But she gave it to me. No problem.” No problem. There are phrases men use when they haven’t yet understood there is a problem. They are usually the last honest thing they say before fear teaches them better language.
“You put your hands on a woman you met five minutes earlier.”
His brows pull together. “She agreed to dance with me.” The answer is reasonable.
That makes it worse. His eyes move past me toward the main street, looking for witnesses.
Friends. Options. He sees none and looks back at me.
“It sounds like you’re more worried about me disrespecting you than disrespecting her. ”
“I am not worried.” I step forward again. He steps back, and his shoulders meet the brick wall. The color begins to leave his face. I bring my mouth close to his ear. “You should be.”
He closes his eyes and lifts his hands toward his face.
“You are going to hide?” I ask. “You do not want to try to hit me first?”
He lowers his hands slowly, apparently deciding that because I’m still talking, I must be calming down. “I didn’t know she was with you.”
I drive my fist into the soft place beneath his ribs.
He folds into me with a broken cry, clutching the front of my coat because there is nothing else to hold.
His breath disappears. He coughs against my shoulder, trying to force air back into his lungs.
I let him hold on for a moment. I even put one hand against the back of his head and shush him. “You’re all right,” I tell him.
Then I grip his careless hair and pull his head back until he has to look at me. His eyes are wide, confusion carved into his face, searching mine for something human he will not find. “I wouldn’t have—” he whispers.
“What?” I ask. “Touched her? Or touched her in front of me?”
“I wouldn’t have touched her at all if I’d known.”
“Known what?”
He swallows. “That you were with her.”
“Wrong.” I drive my knee into his stomach hard enough to lift him against the wall.
He drops immediately, falling onto his hands and knees.
He retches onto the wet pavement, coughing between breaths.
I crouch beside him. “That she is moya,” I growl near his ear.
Mine. The words come out before I can stop them.
He nods without looking at me. That should be enough, but I see his hand on her waist again. I grab him by the collar, pull him partly upright, and hit him once across the face. His head snaps sideways, and he drops back to his knees with blood pouring from his nose.
I reach into his coat and take his phone.
“Look at it.” When he lifts his face, I hold the screen in front of him.
The phone attempts to recognize him. It fails.
Blood covers his mouth. One eye is already beginning to swell.
The device gives a small, indifferent vibration and asks for his passcode instead.
I stare at the screen. For one second, the absurdity of what I’m doing nearly reaches me. I am standing in a freezing side street holding a stranger’s phone, trying to erase a number Taylor gave him willingly.
Then the anger returns. I throw the phone against the wall. The screen bursts, and the casing separates when it hits the pavement.
“You will not call her.”
“I won’t.”
“You will not message her. You will not approach her. If she calls you, you will not answer.”
“I won’t.” His voice breaks around the words.
Destroying the phone doesn’t erase her number from the world. It doesn’t change the fact that she gave it to him. It only gives the violent part of me something it understands.
A broken thing. A closed door. For a moment, I feel calm. Violence has always had the mercy of simplicity. A man offends. A man is corrected. The body understands rules the mind tries to negotiate.
This is not me protecting her. Nikolai did not disrespect her. Not really. He touched her with the careless confidence of a young man in a bar, but she allowed it. She gave him her number. She made her choice.
I knew this before I hit him. I know it now, standing over him while he bleeds into the dirty snow. This is simple jealousy. The word rolls through me, humiliating and precise. Boyish.
Taylor does not belong to me. I made that clear to her. I am the one who wouldn’t take her virginity. I am the one who called her Miss Hayes and pushed her toward men her own age.
Then I punished the first man foolish enough to believe the lie I forced her to tell.
I look down at Nikolai. I step back. “Get up.”
He does not move. “VSTAN!” GET UP!
He struggles onto one elbow, then back to his knees. He tries to stand and fails. His ribs will bruise. His nose may be broken.
He will live. He will remember. That’s what I wanted. I tell myself that’s what I wanted. I message Pavel. The car turns into the side street less than a minute later.
I look down at Nikolai—a young man, I see it now, not much more than a kid compared with me—and say, “You were robbed. You do not know who did this to you. That’s what you’ll tell your friends, the hospital, and anyone else who asks.”
He nods. He’s trying not to cry now. It makes him younger.
“Tell anyone you do know, and I will come back to finish it.”
He nods again. For the first time tonight, disgust with myself rises in me.
I get into the car and close the door. Pavel pulls away from the curb without speaking. When we are three streets over, I take the burner phone from the compartment beneath the seat and dial 103.
“I need an ambulance. I found a man badly injured beside the closed pharmacy on Arbat Street. By the bar.”
She asks for my name. I hang up and turn off the phone.
I have left blood on the screen.