16. Artem #2
"Don't destroy her," he says, not a request, not a command, something smaller and more pathetic than either. A plea, from a man who has never in his life had to plead for anything. "Do not do to her what Alexei did to your sister."
His words cut in the way he intends them to. I push down whatever they stir.
"You should have thought of that," I tell him, "before you gave Irina to Alexei."
I stand, button my jacket, and leave him sitting in my club with his vodka and his grief and the quiet silence of a man who understands, finally, what it costs to trade people like currency.
The door closes behind me without a sound.
That evening, I sit at my desk with Irina's photograph in my hands. I trace the X's I've already placed and feel the familiar pull, the need to finish what I started.
Viktor's words echo in my head. I might not harm Katya the way he fears, but I cannot bring myself to believe she will get out of this unscathed.
Pyotr stands near the window, not looking at me. "After the wedding," he says. "You'll start then?"
"After the wedding." I look at Irina's face.
Her terrified smile. "He'll be dead before he gets back to Moscow.
The Bratva will need a successor, and they won't accept me alone.
I'm in New York, I'm too young, and I don't have the history.
But they'll accept his granddaughter." A pause. "They'll accept us together."
"And Katya? When you solidify power, will you free her?"
I set the photograph down. "Katya will adjust. If she's cooperative, she can continue dancing. This does not have to be completely terrible for her. I will give her the freedom she needs along with my name."
Truthfully, I do not desire to crush Katya, but I will if she defies me.
Pyotr turns to look at me. His expression is the one he reserves for moments when he thinks I'm lying to myself — not to him, not to anyone else, specifically to myself. I've known him long enough to recognize it.
"What?"
He looks back at the window. "The men from her apartment called. They've finished. Her things are in the second bedroom."
I nod.
"The music box," he adds. "They weren't sure where to put it. I told them the windowsill."
I don't respond to that.
That fucking music box. I bought it as part of my ruse, and yet it's become a symbol for something I don't care to name. I knew she would like it. Months of watching her taught me that.
"It was a means to an end," I tell him.
He shakes his head, but he doesn't continue.
"Saturday?"
"Saturday," I confirm.
He leaves, and I sit alone in the penthouse.
I think about Katya in her now-empty apartment, surrounded by whatever is left after my men took what I decided she should keep.
I think about her face in that restaurant. The way she stopped being a victim and started being something else entirely — something calculating, something that looked at me and at Viktor and decided to extract whatever guarantees she could from a situation she couldn't escape.
Irina would never have done that.
I put the photograph away.
Saturday.
She arrives forty minutes later.
I know it's her before Pyotr announces her presence. The door opens without a knock.
My men left her a keycard as I ordered.
She stands in the entrance of my penthouse in a dark knit skirt and a sweater, her hair loose, her face flushed with cold and fury.
"You had someone go through my apartment," she says.
"Yes."
"Without asking me."
"Also yes."
She steps inside and the door swings shut behind her. She hasn't looked away from me once. "You took my things. You packed up my life and had it delivered here like it was luggage, like I'm luggage, like you can just—" She stops. Breathes. Starts again. "You had no right."
"You'll be living here as of Saturday. It was practical."
"It was a violation." Her voice is shaking, but not from fear.
I've heard fear in voices, spent years learning its particular register, and this isn't it.
This is rage, clean and hot and entirely directed at me.
"That apartment was mine. Every single thing in it was mine.
You don't get to decide what happens to my life without talking to me first."
"I've already decided quite a lot about your life without talking to you first," I point out. "This seems minor by comparison."
The look she gives me could strip paint.
"Don't be glib about this like it's nothing, like I'm nothing, like the only life I've ever built for myself is just a logistical inconvenience you needed to tidy up before the wedding.
" She's moving now, crossing the room toward me, and I stay where I am because retreating is not something I do, and also because I want to see how close she'll come.
"I had a system. I had my things exactly where I wanted them.
I had—" Her voice catches for just a moment. "I had a home."
"You have a new one."
"I didn't choose this one."
"No," I agree. "You didn't."
She stops three feet from me. Up close, her eyes are bright with anger, and I can see the effort it's costing her to stay articulate, to keep the words coming instead of dissolving into something messier.
She's fighting herself as much as she's fighting me, and the discipline of it, the way she refuses to break in front of me, is something I find myself noting with more than tactical interest.
"The apartment is gone," I tell her calmly. "The lease has been terminated. Your things are here. That's the reality, and being angry at me about it won't change it."