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I’m looking forward to Thursday. Not just because she’s interesting. Not just because of the photograph. Because Berezin’s daughter walked into my channels three weeks after I killed her father and she’s hiding something, and whatever it is, it might be the next step toward finding who put Lavro on that floor.

That’s what Thursday is actually about.

The rest of it is just how she looks in that photograph.

3

Evelina

The compound smells like diesel, salt water, and money that doesn’t need to apologize for itself.

I knew it would be industrial. I’d done enough research to know the Nazarov operation runs out of the Brooklyn waterfront, that the building looks like a warehouse from the outside because that’s exactly what it used to be, that the men at the gate have weapons they’re not hiding because there’s no one out here to hide them from. What I didn’t know, couldn’t have known from research alone, is the weight of it. The way the whole place sits in the landscape like it grew there. Like it’s been here longer than the city around it and plans to stay longer still.

I knew every eye would be on me the second I stepped out of the car. I’d dressed for it.

The suit is charcoal, cut close, the kind that says I’m not here to impress you but does exactly that. Heels because I refuse to be shorter than I have to be in a room full of men who’ve already decided what I am. My hair is up. My face is what my father taught me it could be, a closed door with a perfectly polished handle.

There are six men between the gate and the main entrance. I count them without looking like I’m counting them. They watch me the way men in this world watch anything unexpected that walks into their space, not hostile but also not welcoming. They’re tracking me, deciding if I’m a problem.

I smile at none of them.

The inside of the building is not what I expected, and I’ve learned in the last three weeks to notice when something doesn’t match my expectations, because the gap is always where the useful information lives. It’s not lavish. No performance of wealth, no marble or gilt or any of the ostentatious nonsense I’d half-anticipated. It’s functional. Big rooms, heavy furniture, maps on the walls, the smell of coffee, cigarettes, and something underneath both that I can’t name and probably don’t want to either. It feels lived in the way a working kitchen feels lived in, everything in its place because it gets used, not because someone arranged it to look that way.

A gorilla-sized man leads me down a hallway to a closed door. He knocks once and opens it without waiting for an answer. Then he steps back, letting me walk in.

Volkov Nazarov is already looking at me when I enter.

I’d seen photographs. I’d spent an uncomfortable number of hours over the past three weeks finding and studying every image I could locate, which wasn’t many, because men like him keep their faces off the internet with the same dedication other people put into keeping their faces on it. What I’d found was enough to know the basics. Dark, scarred, large in a way that has nothing to do with vanity. The photographs made him look hard and forgettable, the kind of face that belongs to a threat assessment rather than a person.

They were inadequate. That’s the only word for it. In person he’s the kind of man that makes you reconsider whatever you thought you knew about the word dangerous, because dangerous doesn’t usually look like that, doesn’t usually have a jaw like that or eyes that dark, doesn’t usually sit in a room and make the room seem like it was built around him specifically. I notice all of this in approximately two seconds, and then I store it away in the drawer marked irrelevant.

This is the man who killed my father. I have to say that to myself, standing in the doorway, because my brain is doing something unexpected and I need to correct for it. This is him. The man from the research, the name at the end of every thread, the reason there’s an empty casket in a cemetery in Manhattan. He looks nothing like what that should look like, and I don’t know what to do with that yet, so I put it away and keep walking.

What the photographs also didn’t capture is the way he takes up space without moving. He’s sitting behind a table that’s been cleared of everything except a single folder, not checking his phone, not shuffling papers, not pretending to be busy the way powerful men often do when they want to make you wait. He’s just sitting there looking at me, and that complete absence of fidget or performance is more unsettling than anything I’d prepared for.

There are four other men in the room, but my eyes don’t leave his.

I cross the floor, pull out the chair across from him without being invited to, and sit down. I set my bag on the floor beside me and fold my hands on the table. I don’t say anything first, because the first person to speak in a room like this has already given something away.

He lets the silence run for five full seconds. “Berezin’s daughter.”

His voice is low and rough, like gravel that’s been lived in too long. My chest responds before my brain does, a pull I have absolutely no use for right now or ever.

“Evelina,” I say. “Since we’ll be working together, you may as well use it.”

One of the men behind me shifts. Volkov doesn’t react at all.

“You said you have a proposal,” he says.

“I do.” I take out a single sheet of paper and slide it across the table. He doesn’t touch it. “My father is dead. You and I both know why, and we both know his death created a problem for your seat on the Crown. The other families are watching to see how you handle the instability. A public reckoning. An ongoing question about whether the Bratva can be trusted to manage its internal issues without creating collateral damage that touches everyone else.”

He’s still looking at me, not the paper.

“What I’m proposing is a solution. You marry me. Berezin’s daughter, publicly, with the Crown as witness. It changes the story entirely. Not an execution followed by chaos, a negotiation that ended in an alliance. You didn’t destroy the Berezin name, you brought it into the fold. The families see a man who handles his problems cleanly, and your seat stops being the question everyone’s quietly asking.” I lean back slightly. “In exchange, I get protection, a name that carries weight in this world while I figure out what’s left of my life, and a formal transfer of my father’s estate back to his only living heir, which is me, not the Bratva.” I nod toward the paper. “It’s all in there. I drafted it myself.”

The room is very quiet.

Volkov picks up the paper. He reads it slowly, going over each line like he’s looking for the thing that’s going to bite him. I wait. I’m good at waiting.