Chapter 30 Galina
Galina
Ijolt awake, turning over in the bed and getting tangled in the covers.
I’m too hot, and I kick them back as I scan the room.
Laszlo isn’t in the bed, but I hear the shower running.
It’s dark outside. So much for two hours.
We both must’ve slept for closer to ten.
But I suppose we needed it. Hopefully, this won’t put Laszlo off going out.
My mouth is dry, and my hair is a disaster.
I turn to the headboard and run my fingers over the hole, catching my skin on the rough wood.
The shower cuts off.
Lifting my hand, I push my hair back from my face, listening to the quiet of the house. Different from last night’s quiet. This one has a settled quality to it, the kind that comes when a building has been checked and rechecked, and every man on the perimeter knows his job.
The bathroom door opens, and Laszlo comes out in a towel, rubbing another one over his hair, looking more human than he did this morning.
Still dangerous. Always dangerous. But the particular grey cast that exhaustion had put under his eyes is gone, and the line of his jaw has lost some of its ferocity.
He sees me sitting up and drops the towel from his hair onto the chair. “You’re awake.”
I swing my legs over the side of the bed. “How long have you been up?”
“About an hour.”
“And you didn’t wake me.”
“You needed it.”
I stand and stretch, feeling my spine crack. “So did you.”
“I know,” he says, and he doesn’t offer anything more than that, which I find oddly satisfying. No argument. No deflection. Just the admission, clean and simple.
I go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and splash cold water on my face.
The reflection looking back at me has colour in it now, which is an improvement from this morning.
I drag a brush through my hair and leave it loose, then change into dark jeans and a black silk shirt, practical and unremarkable.
When I come back out, Laszlo is dressed. Dark jeans, dark shirt, the gun already holstered at his back. He’s looking at his phone with the focused expression that means information has arrived.
“Dmitri?” I ask.
“The shooter is a ghost. No matches on the circuit cross-reference. Either he’s not local, or he’s been careful enough that nobody has a name attached to him.” He pulls the shirt on and starts doing up the buttons. “Which confirms what I already thought.”
“He’s gone.”
“He’s gone.” He tucks the shirt in and looks at me. “Are you still set on going out?”
“Are you still set on arguing about it?”
“I’m not arguing. I’m asking.”
“Yes,” I say. “I am.”
He studies me for a moment, then nods once. “Fine. We eat somewhere close. We take two cars. Grisha and Yuri in the second. You stay on my left the entire time.”
“Okay,” I say.
Something in his expression shifts. Not surprise exactly, but close enough to it that I notice. He was bracing for a fight and didn’t get one.
“Don’t look so shocked,” I say, pulling on my boots and zipping them. “I’m not unreasonable.”
“You are frequently unreasonable.”
“I’m frequently right,” I correct. “Those aren’t the same thing.”
He makes a sound that is not quite a laugh and moves to the door, and I follow him out.
Leonid is waiting at the bottom of the stairs with my coat already over his arm and the expression of a man who has accepted his fate with dignified resentment.
He holds it out without being asked, and I shrug into it, catching his eye for a second.
He gives me nothing back except a precise, almost imperceptible nod that I think is his version of approval. I’ll take it.
Grisha and Yuri are already outside. I hear the second car idling at the kerb as Laszlo opens the front door and steps out first, scanning the street before he moves aside to let me through.
The night air is cool, but dry.
Laszlo’s hand finds the small of my back as we move to the car, and I let myself lean into it slightly, just enough to feel him solid beside me on the driveway.
The street is quiet. A black cab crawls past at the far end and turns off without slowing.
Nobody is watching.
Or if they are, they’re doing it from far enough away that Grisha’s sweep of the street hasn’t caught them, and Grisha catches everything.
Laszlo opens the car door, and I get in. He rounds the bonnet and folds himself into the driver’s seat, and the door shuts, and the quiet of the car settles around us.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Somewhere close.”
“You said that already.”
“And I mean it both times.”
He pulls out into the street, and I watch the houses slide past in the dark. The lamps are on, orange and steady, and nothing moves between them except the occasional car and a couple walking a dog at the far end of the road, who don’t spare us a glance.
“Italian,” I say.
He glances at me. “What?”
“Italian. That’s where we’re going. There’s a place nearby that I’ve been going to since I was twelve. Corner table, no windows on two sides, the owner knows my father and will have Grisha and Yuri in the back without making a scene about it.”
Laszlo is quiet for a moment. I can feel him running it through the filter he runs everything through, exits, sight lines, who knows the address, whether my father eating there makes it a liability or an asset.
“You’ve been going since you were twelve,” he says.
“Since Mum used to take me. Yes.”
Another beat. “The owner. How well does he know Viktor?”
“Well enough that he once hid two of Dad’s men in his kitchen for six hours during a street sweep. He didn’t charge them for the food either, which my dad found deeply funny. Turn left here,” I say. “Then straight on until the corner with the wine bar.”
He follows the directions without argument, which is novel enough that I file it away. The second car follows at the distance Grisha always keeps.
The restaurant appears on the left, exactly as it always has. A narrow frontage with a dark green awning and warm light spilling through the glass. The name is painted in gold above the door in letters that have been there longer than I have been alive.
Laszlo pulls up and looks at it for a second before he lowers the window and looks up at Grisha.
Grisha hands him something, and Laszlo takes it with a smirk. He raises the window again and hands the thing to me.
I glare at it with a raised eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“You said a bulletproof hat. Well, here you go.”
“It’s fucking ugly,” I grit out at the black baseball cap with London printed on the front.
Laszlo’s jaw tightens, eyes cooling to winter-grey. “Put it on, moya zhena, or we go back home.” The muscle in his cheek twitches once—his tell when there’s no room for negotiation. I snatch the cap and put it on with a grimace.
“Everyone will think I’m a tourist,” I grumble, the weight of the hat pressing against my scalp.
“Better that than dead,” he says and opens his car door. I get out before he can come round to open my door, mostly because the cap is making me feel ridiculous, and standing still only makes it worse.
Laszlo appears at my side without making a sound, which should probably stop being impressive by now. It doesn’t.
The door opens before we reach it.
Marco is seventy-three years old, built like a man who has been eating his own food for six decades, and has the kind of face that looks permanently delighted to see you even when it isn’t. He takes one look at me, then at Laszlo, then back at me, his expression knowing.
“Galina,” he says, and kisses both my cheeks before stepping back to get a proper look. His eyes flick to the ring. Then to Laszlo. Then back to me with a question in them, he is too polite to ask out loud.
“Marco, this is my husband, Laszlo Voronov.”
Marco’s eyebrows go up, and then something shifts in his face.
Not just recognition of the name. Something deeper.
He looks at Laszlo with the particular assessment of an old man who has watched enough Bratva men walk through his door to know exactly what he is looking at, and then he nods once, slowly, with the gravity of someone conferring approval that wasn’t asked for but is being offered anyway.
“Come,” Marco says. “Corner table. Yes?”
“Yes,” Laszlo says before I can.
The restaurant is half full. Soft lighting, white tablecloths, the smell of garlic and wine and something slow-cooked that I feel in my stomach immediately.
We sit, backs to the wall, and I relax a fraction as wine is placed in front of us, along with a basket of bread. I open my mouth, but Laszlo’s fingers press over it.
“Don’t say it,” he says.
“Okay,” I mumble and pick up the menu when he removes his hand from my mouth.