Chapter Two #2
“She became part of it when you used her name with men who collect properly.”
Nadia’s head turned toward Petya.
Petya’s face went tight.
His grip on the envelope changed. Nadia saw it too. Whatever Petya had said or signed, he’d pulled her name close enough for Gennady to use it.
“I didn’t use her name like that,” Petya said.
Gennady spread his hands. “I hear many things.”
“You hear lies.”
“I hear numbers. Numbers are never lies.”
Nadia took the envelope from Petya’s hand. For one second, I thought she’d throw it in Gennady’s face.
She folded it once, slid it into Petya’s coat pocket, and gripped the lapel.
“You’re walking out with me now,” she said.
Petya stared at her. “Nadia.”
“You won’t give him money where he can make a show of refusing it. You won’t throw a punch in a room full of his men. You won’t make me watch them drag you out because your pride got louder than your brain.”
His mouth opened once, then closed.
He looked at the envelope in his pocket. He looked at Gennady. Then he looked down at Nadia’s hand on his coat.
Gennady’s smile thinned. “You’re such a sweet family. This is very touching.”
Nadia didn’t give him her face. She turned Petya by the coat and started him toward the door.
The scarred man moved half a step.
I held his stare.
The color drained from his mouth. He shifted back beside the bar and kept his hands where I could see them.
Gennady saw it.
Gennady turned toward our booth.
I lifted my glass and drank.
Gennady’s face held its smile, but the skin around his eyes tightened.
Nadia had Petya three steps from the door when he tried to turn back. She caught his sleeve with both hands and pulled him close enough for her words to reach only him.
“Go home,” she said. “If you love me at all, go home and stay alive.”
Petya’s shoulders rose. He looked over her head at Gennady, then at the two men by the bar, then down at his sister.
The fight went out of his fists.
It stayed in his face.
He opened the door himself. Cold rushed in. He stepped outside and stood there under the awning, furious and ashamed, waiting because he wouldn’t leave her alone.
Nadia pointed toward the street.
Petya shook his head.
“Please,” she said.
Petya turned away from the window and walked out of sight.
Nadia stayed at the door until he was gone. Then she came back inside, shut out the cold, and pressed her hands once against the black satin at her waist.
She did it only once.
Then she picked up the tray from the service station and went back to work.
The lounge returned to itself by degrees. The bartender poured again. The piano picked up a softer tune. The woman in emerald silk leaned toward the men at her table, and one of them lowered his voice when her eyes shifted toward Gennady.
Gennady stayed away from his drink.
He followed Nadia across the room as she carried a receipt to the older couple.
Lev leaned forward enough that his voice wouldn’t travel. “Do you want me to remove the Kask men from the room?”
“No, I want them visible.”
“The scarred one moved toward her brother.”
“I saw him.”
“You let him stop himself.”
“I let him understand whose room he was standing in.”
Lev sat back.
Nadia passed our booth with three empty glasses on her tray.
She didn’t look at me. She smelled faintly of citrus and heat and something clean beneath the smoke of the room. Up close, the small gold hoop in her left ear caught the light, and a loose piece of dark hair clung near her temple.
Want moved through me, hard and immediate.
I wanted the tray out of her hand. I wanted my coat over her shoulders. I wanted Gennady Kask on the floor, learning the difference between looking at a woman and having a right to touch her.
I kept my seat and my hands to myself.
Nadia set the glasses down at the server station and took a new order from a table of men. One of them snapped his fingers at her. She finished writing before she lifted her eyes to him, and he’d had the sense to put his hand down.
My phone lit on the table.
Oksana.
She’d worked in my father’s house since I was young enough to know which doors not to open.
I opened the message.
OKSANA:
Mrs. Sorin asked me to let you know your father has taken to bed. He dismissed the doctor and won’t answer questions from staff.
I read it twice.
My hand stayed still beside the glass.
Lev’s eyes flicked to the screen. “Your mother?”
“Oksana,” I said. “At my mother’s request.”
“Do you need to go?”
“I don’t need to go for this.”
Lev nodded once.
Across the room, Gennady moved toward the short hall beside the bar. One of his men followed. The scarred one stayed behind with his back to the room and his eyes on Nadia.
I touched the edge of my phone and turned it facedown.
“We leave after we hear this,” I said.
Lev followed my gaze.
Gennady had stopped near the coat check with a man in a dark green suit. The man was narrow through the shoulders, with slicked hair and restless fingers. He kept checking the bar mirror.
Gennady leaned close to him.
The music covered his first words.
Then a drunk near the piano laughed over his own toast, the bartender stopped the blender, and Gennady’s voice slid through the gap.
“She thinks she’s clever,” he said.
The man in green glanced toward the room. “Is this because of the contract?”
Gennady laughed. “Because she entered herself. Can you imagine? All that pride, and she walks herself to the block.”
My fingers closed around the base of my glass.
Lev didn’t move.
The man in green said, “Then why are you here?”
“I’m here because she keeps mistaking delay for escape.
” Gennady looked toward the dining room.
His eyes found Nadia at the server station.
“She’s untouched. That brings men with money, and men with money get stupid.
She belongs with me. I told the auctioneer what happens if her lot goes anywhere else. ”
The man in green swallowed. “He agreed?”
“He likes money. He likes keeping his fingers more.” Gennady smiled. “I coaxed him.”
The word came out soft and pleased.
My glass cracked.
The split ran thin through the rim.
Lev’s chin lowered a fraction.
A bead of Armagnac touched my thumb.
I set the glass down before it broke in my hand.
Nadia moved through the room twenty feet away, carrying four champagne flutes on a tray. She didn’t know Gennady had followed her decision back to the auctioneer. She didn’t know he had turned her choice into another Kask trap.
She smiled at a woman who thanked her.
The smile didn’t last.
Gennady kept talking.
“By tomorrow night, she stops pretending she has options,” he said. “I’ll enjoy that part.”
The man in green glanced toward the room again. “And if another bidder pushes?”
“Then the auctioneer remembers who paid him. If he forgets, someone reminds him.”
Lev’s hand rested near his knife.
I gave one small shake of my head.
We wouldn’t do this here. Nadia stood twenty feet away, and Gennady was already hunting for anything he could use against her.
The man in green left first, moving toward the restrooms before cutting through the side corridor. Gennady stayed by the coat check long enough to watch Nadia bend over a table to collect a signed receipt.
I stood.
Lev stood with me.
No one at the nearest tables looked up for more than a second.
They knew better.
I walked to the end of the booth, close enough to the short hall that the music covered my voice and far enough from the bar that Gennady would see only two Sorin men shifting position.
Lev stepped beside me.
I spoke in Russian, low enough that it wouldn’t carry.
“Find the auctioneer. Find her lot. Find out who Kask paid.”
Lev’s face went still.
He didn’t ask which woman.
He didn’t ask why.
“I understand,” he said.
“If the auctioneer promised her to Kask, I want proof before the doors open tomorrow.”
“I’ll find him.”
“Do it without drawing Kask eyes.”
Lev glanced toward Gennady. “And Kask?”
“Gennady can keep smiling for as long as it serves me.”
He left through the side of the dining room at an easy pace. He looked like a man stepping away to handle a call. The scarred Kask soldier watched him go, shifted his weight once, and stayed where he was.
Gennady returned to the bar and lifted his drink as if nothing in the world had shifted under his feet.
I remained standing for a moment.
Nadia came out from the service station with a fresh tray. For the first time that night, her attention moved across our booth.
She gave me one glance, and it was enough. Her dark eyes were tired, wary, and alive with a fire Gennady had mistaken for something he could cup in his hands and smother.
She looked away before I could become one more man making her shift heavier.
I sat back down in the booth with the cracked glass in front of me.
By tomorrow night, I would know the auctioneer’s name, Nadia’s lot, and exactly who Kask had paid.
Gennady could walk into that room believing she was already his.
He would leave understanding she was not.