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I stand up.

She turns fast and steps back. Her face goes shut, chin up, eyes on mine. She thinks I’m done with her.

I walk to the desk, stand beside her, and look at the photograph. Lavro grinning at something I’ll never know. I pick up the bottle and hold it out.

She takes it without asking what it is or why, drinks from it properly, a real pull, not the polite sip she saves for rooms full of people she’s performing for. Doesn’t flinch at the taste, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and holds the bottle back out.

She’s Berezin’s daughter. She’s standing in Lavro’s room because I let her into my house because she found something I need. That’s the reason I’m handing her the bottle. That’s all this is.

“That’s my brother,” I say. “Lavro. Someone put him in the ground ten weeks ago.”

She says nothing. Doesn’t do the sorry thing. I’d have thrown her out if she did.

I take the bottle. Drink. Too smooth, the taste of a dead argument. I put it back between the photographs.

“We were at a meeting,” I say. “Neutral ground. Someone set the room knowing our schedule, knowing the layout, knowing when to send the men through the door.” I keep my eyes on the photograph. “Three seconds. He saw it before I did and he went left instead of letting it go.” I stop. My jaw is so tight it hurts. “Thirty-one years old.”

That’s it. That’s everything I’ve got to say about it.

She stays beside me. Doesn’t speak. Doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t fill it with anything useless. Just stands there in my brother’s room with his vodka on her lips and her eyes on his photograph.

I don’t know what to do with that, so I don’t do anything with it.

I put the bottle down and walk to the door. My hand hits the frame, and I stop with my back to her.

She found something in Berezin’s apartment. I need what’s on that drive. I let her in because she’s the closest thing I have to a lead and keeping her inside is how I get to it. That’s the plan. It’s a good plan, and I’m sticking to it.

I leave without looking back.

Marka’s at the bottom of the stairs with two phones and the face he makes when the night has already made its own plans.

I take both phones and get back to work.

13

Evelina

Volkov comes in late, still in his jacket, and I know before he opens his mouth that whatever happened between us in Lavro’s room tonight is sitting differently on him now. Not softer. Rawer. The anger that has nowhere left to go and keeps looking for something to break.

I’m at the desk when he walks in, laptop open, drive safely hidden. I close the laptop before he’s two steps through the door, which is reflex now, and his eyes go to the desk first, then to me.

“I want a key to the front gate,” I say.

He takes his jacket off and drops it on the chair. “No.”

“I’ve been in this house for three weeks without leaving it once. I’m your wife, not your prisoner.”

“Same thing,” he says, and he means it, which is the most infuriating part.

“It is not the same thing.” I push back from the desk and stand, because having this conversation sitting down is a concession I’m not making. “I have a life. I had a career, contacts, obligations that don’t disappear because you put a ring on me.”

“You don’t have a career anymore,” he says. “You’ve got a husband.”

“I have a husband who doesn’t trust me,” I say. “Which you may as well say out loud since we’re both thinking it.”

He looks at me for a moment. “I don’t trust you. That’s correct.”

“Then what exactly is the point of this marriage?”