Chapter 2 #2
I do. Both her palms flatten against my chest before traveling firmly over my ribs and sides, searching for a wound beneath the cloth. The examination begins with brisk efficiency, but her hands slow over the hard plane of my chest, and her attention follows them for one revealing second.
“None of this is yours?” she asks.
“No.”
Relief loosens her mouth before she notices my amusement. Katie snatches her hands back and pulls the jacket closed with injured dignity.
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“Your face is loud.”
Boris enters last with someone else’s blood on his cuff.
“Igor reached the alley,” he reports. “A waiting car took him. We have the driver’s partial plate.”
I pour water into a clean glass and hand it to Katie. “Tell me how you saw him.”
She takes the glass but doesn’t drink. “A thank-you usually comes before the interrogation.”
“You have it. I’ll find better manners when I know whether those men intend to find you.”
Anger restores color to her face and makes her forget to hold the jacket closed, exposing one black cord with the upper curve of her breast.
She notices my attention and pulls the lapels together. “Ask your questions while looking at my face.”
I keep my gaze on her face. “I’ve been trying. Your top is falling off.”
Katie pulls my jacket higher across her chest. “Then practice harder.”
Boris studies the wall while George develops an urgent interest in the lock.
I sit behind the desk. “Show me what happened.”
Katie rises despite Cherry’s hand and uses my water glass for the chair, a letter opener for the doorway, then three coins for the people outside.
“You were here, with the door behind your left shoulder in the second mirror. Everyone turned toward the room when I sat on you, but the shooter kept his chest aimed at your reflection. I could reach you faster than I could reach him.”
“You monitored the mirrors throughout the dance,” I say.
“I monitor space when I move. If I turn without knowing what’s behind me, I hit something.”
“Where did you learn?”
“Ballet, with years of studios too small for the class.” She returns the coins to their stack. “May I have my clothes now?”
Her clean explanation could have been prepared in advance by someone placed within reach to save me. The public draw makes a staged rescue unlikely, but Katie is new and unusually skilled on the night two men breach a building whose internal routes should be secure.
I admire her without releasing my suspicion.
I look at George. “Was every dancer entered?”
“Every woman available for the premium rooms,” he says. “They drew in posted order. I mixed the bag in front of them, and Katie reached in herself.”
“Her first shift?” I ask.
George nods. “First hour. Cherry sent a practice video, and I checked Katie’s identification personally.”
Cherry stands beside the sofa. “The café closed without paying her, so I brought her directly from our apartment.”
Katie stares at me. “You think I arranged to be shot at in borrowed underwear?”
I haven’t accused her, but she reads rooms too well to miss the direction of my questions.
“I think Igor saw your face,” I say. “You cut him deeply and left a permanent reminder. The man who drove him away also saw you carried through my club.”
Her grip on the jacket loosens. “What does that mean?”
“It means you need protection until I know who authorized tonight.”
“Cherry and I can stay somewhere else.”
“A hotel leaves a payment trail. Friends have addresses. Your apartment is already in the records of a compromised building.”
Katie looks at George, who can’t contradict me.
“I can place guards outside your home,” I continue. “Or you can stay at one of my properties.”
“Depend on a stranger who may be the reason someone wants me dead?” Her fingers tighten around my jacket. “No.”
Ivan left three marriage dossiers on this desk ahead of the meeting. He and the captains want visible continuity, but each proposed bride arrives tied to a father who expects influence in return; I want no second organization inside my home.
Katie belongs to no criminal organization I recognize; she has courage, a useful mind, and the instinct to move faster than armed men. Keeping her near me will expose a staged rescue, and my name offers the strongest shield if she is innocent.
The answer is so practical that it takes me a moment to enjoy how insane it’ll sound.
“Marry me,” I say.
Nobody speaks.
Boris closes his eyes once. George removes his glasses. Cherry’s mouth opens, but Katie reaches disbelief first.
“You were shot at,” she says slowly. “Did one of the bullets hit your brain?”
“A wife has protection a witness doesn’t,” I say. “Anyone who touches you declares war.”
Katie pulls my jacket tighter around herself. “You could protect me without marrying me.”
“Guards can be bought or killed,” I tell her. “Marriage binds every Dymov captain to your defense.”
Her gaze hardens. “Convenient distinction.”
“An important one,” I say.
“We met less than an hour ago, mostly during your interrogation.”
“I know more about how you behave under gunfire than most men learn about a wife in a year.”
Cherry makes a strangled sound that may be a laugh; Katie doesn’t look away from me.
“You are insane,” she says. “The answer is no.”
She refuses without hesitation, which I prefer, because any woman who agrees before asking the cost is either a fool or already working an angle.
Katie removes my jacket to fold it once, preserving more dignity than the costume permits, then places it on the sofa before Cherry helps her toward the door.
“Keep it,” I tell her.
She looks back. “I don’t want anything else from you.”
“You kept my life.”
“Consider us even.”
She snatches the jacket from the sofa anyway and wraps it around herself.
George escorts both women to the dressing room under guard. Boris waits until the office door shuts behind them.
“You proposed to a woman whose surname you don’t know,” he says.
I pick up the water glass Katie used to represent me. “George has paperwork.”
“That repairs the romance.”
Outside the smoked window, Katie crosses the upper corridor with my jacket wrapped around the borrowed costume and Cherry beside her, followed at a distance by two guards, without once looking toward my office.
Someone inside this club gave Igor the service route. Whoever planned the attack will learn that a new dancer ruined it, marked his enforcer, and left alive with my attention. Humiliation like that won’t be forgiven; to men like Igor, cruelty passes for restored pride.
I tell Boris to keep Igor’s presence private until we can prove who gave the order.
Pasha will deny a soldier everyone knows belongs to him, calling Igor independent until evidence makes the lie expensive.
Opening a war on recognition alone would let Pasha choose the ground while frightening our allies.
Boris gives one grave nod; in our organization, captains command crews and soldiers answer to them, while a boss who can’t prove a grievance may discover how quickly sworn loyalty becomes practical caution.
“Put a car on her building,” I tell Boris. “Visible enough to discourage amateurs. Far enough back that it doesn’t crowd her windows.”
“She refused protection.”
“She doesn’t know me well enough to put her life in my hands.”
Boris studies me with the patience he usually reserves for explosives that may have a second trigger. “And the marriage?”
Katie walks out of my club with no protection except two guards she didn’t choose. By morning, tonight will have followed her home.
“The proposal will sound less insane,” I say, “after the people hunting her reach home.”