3. Three #3
"Once the fibers are stable, I'd back the damaged area from the flesh side.
A thin piece of compatible hide, bonded with a flexible adhesive that moves with the original leather instead of fighting it.
The backing gives the panel its structure back without changing how it hangs on the outside.
The bullet hole stays open. The blood stays in the grain. But the jacket stops dying."
He said it like it was nothing. Like he hadn't just described something that combined three different traditions of leatherwork that nobody alive practiced together.
"Then I'd re-oil the whole piece. This is Russian leather.
Yuft. Birch oil in the finish, aye?" He brought the collar to his face again and inhaled.
"Whoever stored this kept it in plastic.
Plastic suffocates the hide. The birch oil is what keeps the leather alive, keeps it flexible, and it's been slowly dying inside that bag for years.
I'd need to source birch oil, strip the old finish, recondition the entire jacket, and re-oil it by hand.
The color will darken where I work it, but I can feather the transition so it blends with the wear pattern. "
"How long? All of it."
"Weeks. Maybe longer, depending on how the consolidation takes and what materials ye can get me." He rattled the cuffs. "And it'll be bloody difficult to do work this fine in these."
"You're not getting out of the cuffs."
"Then it'll take longer." He set the jacket down on the table between us and leaned back in the chair. The brat was coming back. I could see it in the way his chin came up and his eyes sharpened. "This is yer da's jacket."
I picked up the gun.
"I'm no being smart. I'm telling ye I know what this is.
" He held my eyes, and his voice dropped, not soft, just steady.
"Ye've been carrying this around like a body ye cannae bury.
Every restorer ye took it to looked at the damage and told ye it was done.
And ye kept it anyway because throwing it away would be the same as letting him go. "
The gun was in my hand, and my knuckles were white, and I couldn't feel my fingers. Nobody talked to me like this. Nobody in my life had ever sat across a table from me and said the thing I couldn't say and lived through it.
"I can fix the jacket," he said. "I cannae fix what happened to him. But I can make it so the thing doesnae fall apart in yer hands."
The kid was looking at me like he'd been alive a lot longer than twenty-two years, and my chest was so tight I couldn't pull a full breath.
"You'll stay here," I said. I barely recognized the sound of it. "In this apartment. Under my watch. You'll work on the jacket and you'll give me everything you know about the Italian operation. When the jacket is done and the intel checks out, we'll talk about what happens next."
"And if the jacket isnae done to yer satisfaction?"
I set the gun on the table. "Then you and I have a problem."
"Ye're a real charmer, ye know that?" He pulled the jacket back into his lap and held it there, both hands flat on the leather, the cuffs catching the light. "I'll need a list of materials. And insulin. And food that isnae shite. And somewhere to sleep that isnae a chair."
"You'll get what you need."
"And the cuffs?"
"Stay on."
He looked down at the jacket in his lap. His thumb moved over the bullet hole, one slow pass, the same way he'd traced the seam on my glove, and I stood up before I knew I was moving.
"Yer da had good taste," he said quietly. "Whoever made this loved him."
I opened the front door. Gregori was in the hallway, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, exactly where I knew he'd be. "He's staying here."
Gregori stared at me. "Here?"
"In this apartment. Set up the spare room. Get Collins over in the morning with a full medical kit and a month's supply of insulin. And I need someone to source leather-working tools. Good ones. I'll have a list."
"Boss, you want a prisoner living in your apartment?"
"I want an asset under my direct supervision. Is that a problem?"
"It's a problem if the Italians find out where you live."
"The Italians think he's dead. That's why they left him in a warehouse."
Gregori pushed off the wall. He looked past me into the apartment where the kid was sitting at my table with a dead man's jacket in his lap. "Nikita's going to have questions."
"Nikita can call me." I stepped closer to Gregori. "This isn't a discussion. Get it done."
He went. I stood in the hallway and pressed two fingers to my forehead. From inside the apartment, I could hear the cuffs clink as the kid shifted in the chair. He was still studying the jacket.
I was bringing him into my home. Into the only space in the world that was mine.
I was going to sleep down the hall from him every night until the jacket was done, and I had just bullied two grown men into making it happen at two in the morning because I was definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent in control of this situation.
You're a fucking idiot, Aleksi.
I walked back inside and closed the door behind me.