Chapter 26
Alina
Arkady turns to the sandwich Elena left him and picks up the plate, biting down and chewing quickly. It’s gone in four bites, the plate catching the crumbs as he stands there and eats like a man who forgets that food is fuel.
He places the plate on the dresser and checks his appearance one last time before we move out.
The house has changed.
I feel it the moment we step out of the bedroom and into the hallway. The air is different. Heavier. The particular quality of silence that settles over a place when it’s been scrubbed clean of anything that could be used against it. No staff moving between rooms. No ambient noise from the kitchen.
The first of the men will arrive in ten minutes, and it’s time for me to get into position. I need to be there first so I’m not arriving late to the party like an add-on.
I follow Arkady down the stairs and into the living room, where the furniture has been rearranged precisely.
The rest of the room has been stripped of anything decorative.
No flowers. No art on the walls, presumably so they can’t be used as weapons or hiding places.
The overhead light has been dimmed to something amber and deliberate.
The windows are closed and the blinds drawn.
I glance at Arkady, and he gestures to a leather armchair, where I’m guessing he is going to sit.
There is a chair next to it. I don’t take offence that it is one of the head-of-the-table dining room chairs.
I’m not here to make myself comfy, I’m here to watch and bait.
I cross over to it and sit, back straight, hands in my lap, knees together to the side, ankles together, not crossed.
Dima takes up his position at the back of the room without a word, arms folded, face like a closed door.
The man I’m guessing is Kosta, materialises beside him, he is both impressive and terrifying.
Vik stands to Arkady’s left, a step behind, and the three of them together form a perimeter that makes the room feel smaller.
Arkady doesn’t sit yet. He stands at the centre of it, hands in his pockets, and the stillness he carries is a different kind from the one I’ve been practising all afternoon. Mine is deliberate. His is just what he is.
I study my hands in my lap, making sure the rings are on full display, and run through the faces one more time. Seva. Grisha. Miroslav. Anton. Lev. Pavel. Ilya. Roman. Yury. Kaspar. Anatoly. And the ghost of Dmitri, who may or may not walk through that door in the next ten minutes.
“Time,” Vik says and that one word is like a shotgun in the room.
I plaster an expression on my face that says I’m here, but I find this all boring and beneath me. I hope. It looked that way when I practised in the mirror earlier. Arkady moves to stand next to me, but we don’t touch or talk. He doesn’t even look at me.
Vik doesn’t move. Dima doesn’t move. Arkady doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
I hear voices in the hallway. Low, male, the specific register of men who don’t raise their voices because they’ve never needed to. Footsteps on marble. Then the living room door swings open, and the first of them files in.
Seva. I recognise him immediately from Arkady’s hierarchy photographs. Tall, broad, with Arkady’s colouring. They look like they could be brothers. He moves like a man who has been told his whole life that rooms belong to him. His eyes sweep the space in one practised arc, and they land on me.
I don’t flinch.
Even when he smirks.
Especially when his eyes light up, but not in a lustful way. More like a ‘who the fuck are you and how can I tease Arkady about this’ way.
I trust him instantly.
Whether that will come back to bite me on the arse remains to be seen.
I force myself to avert my eyes to a space about his head.
It’s where the wall clock used to be. Now it’s just a nail in the wall with a faded patch of paint.
My instructions were not to look at any of them, so this nail becomes my sole focus as the rest of them file in, using my periphery to judge who is who.
Grisha enters next, narrower than his photograph suggested, with the particular economy of movement that belongs to men who spend their lives behind desks.
He scans the room the way a mathematician scans an equation, looking for the variable that doesn’t belong.
He finds me in approximately two seconds.
His expression doesn’t change, but his pace slows by a fraction before he corrects it. Filed.
Anton follows his father in, and I understand immediately what Arkady meant about vanity.
He is handsome in the way that men who know they are handsome always are—slightly too aware of it, wearing it like a second suit.
His gaze doesn’t stop at my face. It travels, deliberate and unhurried, and I let it, because a man looking is a man not thinking, and a man not thinking makes mistakes.
Then Miroslav.
I keep my eyes on the nail.
But I feel him. There is something about the way the room changes when he enters it, a subtle shift in the air pressure, like a window opening in a sealed space.
He is heavier than his photograph, broader across the chest, and he moves with the measured deliberateness of a man who has learned to make every step look considered.
He says nothing to anyone, but every man in the room shifts incrementally when he crosses the threshold.
Not away from him. Towards him. The gravitational pull of a man who has spent three decades making himself indispensable.
I keep my face neutral and my eyes on the nail.
The rest filter in. I track them in my periphery, matching faces to photographs, checking off names like a register.
Lev, thick-necked and deliberate. Pavel, sharp-suited and already smiling at nothing.
Ilya, who moves like a live wire and doesn’t sit down immediately, just stands near the back wall and vibrates.
Roman, who finds his seat with the efficiency of a man who has assessed every exit in under four seconds and decided none of them concerns him.
Yury, who looks like wallpaper and is therefore the most dangerous man in the room apart from the one standing next to me.
Kaspar, who counts exits exactly the way Vik said he would.
Anatoly, phone already in his hand, thumb moving before he’s even sat down.
Felix Abram, texting for deniability. Filed.
The seconds arrange themselves behind their principals like shadows finding their shapes. I run through them too, and then I feel Arkady’s hand twitch next to my shoulder. I keep my eyes fixed on the nail, but I know who has entered. Dmitri.
“Good of you to make it,” Arkady says, talking to Dmitri but encompassing the entire room. Something has changed with Arkady. His stance is almost relaxed. He sits down and places his left ankle on his right knee. “Let’s begin.”
“Our condolences,” Seva starts off. “Nik was a good man. I loved him like a father.”
A murmur of agreement moves through the room like a wave finding a shore. Heads dip. A few of the seconds follow their principals’ lead. Even Roman, who looks like he was carved from concrete and left in the rain, tilts his chin in something approaching acknowledgement.
I keep my eyes on the nail.
Arkady lets the condolences settle and then dissolve. He doesn’t thank anyone for them. He doesn’t perform grief for the room. He simply lets the silence after the last voice run long enough to become uncomfortable, and then he speaks into it.
“Nik built something that doesn’t require a eulogy,” he says. “It requires a successor. That’s why we’re here.”
Another shift in the room. Subtle. The kind of collective recalibration that happens when men who have spent decades reading power dynamics register that the man in front of them isn’t going to ease them into anything.
I note it all without moving my eyes from the nail.
Miroslav moves in his chair. “Who is this?” he rumbles, gesturing a meaty hand at me.
“My wife. Alina Saranova,” Arkady says.
The muted surprise ripples through the room.
Miroslav’s eyes don’t move from me. He is running that calculation on me right now. I can feel it like a draught from an open window.
I let him look.
I don’t look back. I keep my eyes on the nail, my hands still in my lap, my spine perfectly straight, and I breathe slowly.
“Then we must celebrate with a toast,” he says and flicks his hand at his second.
The infamous Punch gets up and moves to the drinks cabinet, where he opens a bottle of vodka and holds it up over the tray of shot glasses assembled for the occasion.
He pours the vodka over the glasses, not bothering to do them separately, and carries the tray around the room.
Each man takes a shot glass. He stops in front of Arkady, ignoring me completely.
Arkady leans forward. “Offer my wife one first.” His voice is as cold as ice.
Punch doesn’t move immediately.
The pause is barely a second. Maybe less. But it’s there, and every man in the room registers it, even the ones pretending they aren’t watching.
Then he turns, lifts the tray, and brings it to me.
I take a glass without looking at him. Without looking at anyone. My fingers close around the shot glass with an unhurried calm. The glass is cold. My hand is steady.
I hold it and wait.
Punch moves back to Arkady, who takes his glass without acknowledgement.
The particular quality of silence that precedes a toast in a room full of men who understand that words said over vodka carry weight is my cue to drop my eyes from the nail and to look at Arkady. Or at least in his general direction.
Miroslav rises to his feet. He’s the kind of man who has been giving toasts since before half the men in this room were old enough to hold a glass, and he knows exactly what he is doing.
“To the new bride. Za zdorov’ye.” He throws the shot back, and everyone repeats the words and drinks.