Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Victor
The penthouse is quiet in the way that expensive things are quiet — not the absence of sound but the presence of sterility.
Forty-two floors up, the city becomes something you look at rather than something that you are a part of, all light and distance, and I've always preferred it that way.
Down on the street, Chicago does what Chicago does at four in the morning — it keeps moving, keeps breathing, indifferent to what happened an hour ago in a nightclub on the north end of Wicker Park. The city has seen worse.
So have I.
Maksim is in the hallway outside the door.
I can hear him shifting his weight on his booted feet when I move through the entryway, the small unconscious adjustments of a man who has been standing still for too long.
Another of my men is posted downstairs at the building entrance — Dmitri and a newer one, Yuri, who is still proving himself.
Standard configuration for a night that has gone sideways, David arranged the increase in security without being asked before I'd even finished my phone calls when I’d left the club, because that's what David does.
He thinks three steps ahead, and he does it quietly, and he never makes me thank him for it, which is why he's been at my side for fifteen years.
He's at the kitchen island now with his laptop open, and a coffee going cold at his elbow, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, already deep in whatever thread he's been pulling at since he got back.
He looks up when I come in. Doesn't speak, just waits, because he knows I'll start when I'm ready and not before.
I pour two fingers of scotch and set the glass on the counter across from him. For a long moment, I just look at it, the energy it takes to bring it to my mouth almost too much to comprehend for my tired mind.
"Talk," I say.
"All the police know is the basic facts," he begins. "Your uncle’s name, age, and that he was the senior advisor to the Rozovsky trust board for the last twelve years." He pauses. "Pavel shot him twice. Both shots center mass. The man didn't suffer."
"Pavel shot him before I arrived."
"By approximately two minutes, yes."
I continue staring at the scotch.
"We had a meeting scheduled. Mikhail and I, with the board.
Next Tuesday. To review the evidence Pavel brought to me and determine the appropriate response.
" I move to the window. The city does its patient, indifferent thing forty-two floors below, all light and motion and complete disregard.
"Pavel was the one who requested that meeting.
He wanted to handle it through the proper channels, said he didn't want to act without board awareness.
" I turn from the window. "So why did they meet at Onyx tonight?
Why then go to my club and shoot the man minutes before I walk through the door, with a cleaning crew still working the floor below. "
David is quiet in the way he's quiet when he's thinking about just how much weight to put on what he says next.
"The evidence was significant, Victor. I've been through all of it tonight.
The account transfers alone — Mikhail was moving Rozovsky funds to people with no legitimate reason to receive them.
Shell accounts, two of them traceable to families with direct conflicts of interest against us.
The communications are worse. There are six weeks of correspondence with people he had absolutely no business speaking to.
" He turns the laptop toward me, but I don't move from the window.
"By any standard, Pavel had more than enough justification.
Men have gone in the ground for a fraction of what Mikhail appears to have done. "
"I know that."
"Then help me understand what's got you questioning the situation."
"The rush." I say, finally moving back to the counter. "In fifteen years, David, have you ever seen Pavel rush anything? Have you ever seen him act without selecting the optimal moment, without controlling every variable he can control?"
I look at him with scrutiny. "He is the most deliberate man I know.
More deliberate than me, even, and I've spent my entire adult life learning patience the hard way.
Shooting Mikhail minutes before I arrive, in my own club, with witnesses on the premises — that is not Pavel being deliberate.
That is something else, and I don't know yet what that something else is. "
David absorbs this. He doesn't dismiss it, which is one of the things I value about him — he disagrees with me openly when he disagrees, and when he doesn't, he doesn't perform an agreement he hasn't reached yet.
"He could have felt the window closing," he says, working it out as he speaks. "If Mikhail suspected he'd been found out, if he was making moves to protect himself or disappear—"
"Then Pavel would have called me." My voice stays level.
I make it stay level. "That's the protocol and Pavel knows it better than anyone.
He comes to me, he tells me the timeline has moved, and we act together.
We have always acted together. The fact that he didn't make that call is the thing I keep circling back to. "
David nods slowly. He closes the laptop. "There's something else."
I wait.
"The police response." He folds his hands on the counter.
"I ran a check on the call that brought them out.
It came from a burner — a number registered to nothing, already dead by the time I traced it.
The call originated from a location two blocks from the club.
" He meets my eyes. "Placed within three minutes of the shot. "
The room falls quiet as we both think hard on the facts laid out before us.
"The club is soundproofed, isn’t it?”
"Completely. I had the system tested eight months ago.
A gunshot fired inside those walls would not reach the street.
" He says it simply, without drama, because David understands that the drama is already present in the fact itself and doesn't need his help.
"Someone called it in, Victor. Someone who either knew it was going to happen before it happened, or was positioned close enough to move the moment it did. "
I pick up the scotch and take half of it in one pull before setting it back down.
Someone knew. Someone was close enough to that building tonight, waiting to place an anonymous call in the three minutes between the shot and the body hitting the floor.
Which means either Pavel communicated his intentions to someone outside our organization, or someone within has been watching Pavel close enough to anticipate him, or worse, Pavel himself arranged the call.
None of those possibilities sit well. All of them sit worse than the last.
"Pavel's behavior," I say. "After. When I spoke with him, when I sent him out — I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary."
David considers it carefully. "No? Nothing at all? You’re sure?”
“He was controlled, he was clear, he gave the account of events without gaps or inconsistencies. When I told him to go, he went." A pause.
"You said there was a cleaner still on the premises. He didn't ask about the cleaner?"
I look at him.
"He pointed a gun at her," I say. "He questioned her. And then when I intervened and redirected, he walked away and didn't ask a single question about how I planned to handle it. Most men in that position ask. It's human nature — you want to know the loose end is tied."
David holds my gaze. "Pavel didn't ask."
"Because he trusted me to handle it."
"Maybe." He leaves that word sitting there by itself, which is its own kind of statement.
I move away from the counter again, restless.
The apartment is large enough that I can move through it without feeling like I'm pacing, but I can still move.
I walk to the window and back, to the far end of the living room and back, and I think about Pavel at nineteen holding a lie perfectly still and never letting it surface, and I think about Pavel three weeks ago laying evidence on my desk with methodical, careful hands, and I think about the minutes between my arrival and the shot that should not have happened yet.
I don't have enough evidence, enough information.
I know I don't have enough. All I have right now is a feeling, and I have learned over the years to give my feelings the respect they've earned, but I've also learned that acting on a feeling without evidence is how you make enemies out of allies and enemies out of yourself.
Pavel is my cousin. He has bled for this organization.
He has stood beside me through things that would have broken other men, and he has never given me a concrete reason to doubt him.
But the police came. And the club is soundproof. And he didn't ask about my intentions with the girl.
"Dig further," I tell David. "I want Pavel's full timeline for tonight — where he was, who he spoke to, everything from noon onward.
And I want someone looking at those account transfers again, not just for where the money went but for who benefited from Mikhail being removed before the board meeting. "
"Already started." He opens the laptop again. "It'll take a few days to do it without Pavel knowing we're looking."
"Take the time. Do it right." I stop by the counter again.
My mind has been doing what it's been doing since I walked through the door, snagging on something and releasing and snagging again, and I've been calling it threat assessment and professional diligence and several other things that are accurate as far as they go. "The cleaner," I say. "Alex Riggs."
David's expression acquires its careful neutrality. "What about her?"