“Would you rather be killed in broad daylight?” he demands. “Would you rather walk around looking over your shoulder every time you step out of the house? Would you rather duck and run every time you see a white van pass by? Shadows can kill you before you even realize they’re hiding people inside of them, narushitel. You can let me protect you—my way—or you can fend for yourself against killers you’ll never hear coming.”
Sighing deeply, I close my eyes for a moment. Mostly because I need to get my bearings, but also because I want to escape his gaze. When I open them again, I type what he wants me to type and hand the phone over forcefully.
“There.”
“Thank you.”
I follow him awkwardly back to the door. I can see a huge duffel bag of my things sitting by the foot of the bed.
“That should keep you occupied,” he says, opening the door and putting himself in the threshold. “But just in case you need a little extra entertainment…” He picks up something from the other side of the door. “This should help.”
Uri deposits the package into my hands and I realize a second later why it looks so familiar.
Eve’s Garden.
“Enjoy,” he says with a straight face while my face burns red.
Then he leaves.
18
URI
“We got an ID on the finger.”
I can tell by Nikolai’s grim tone that it is exactly what we suspected it was. “Igor?”
“Igor,” he confirms.
His breathing sounds heavy but I don’t have to ask him what’s going on to know he’s in the gym, working out his frustrations. The year after I took the mantel of pakhan, he practically lived there.
“Can you stop lifting weights and sit still so we can talk?”
I hear something heavy drop and then a second later, his voice comes through loud and clear. “Just for the record, I was doing pull-ups,” he says shortly. “This move has Sobakin written all over it. We have to do something, Uri. We need to go in and get Igor back.”
My gut twists. “This is Boris Sobakin we’re talking about, Nikolai. You and I both know that Igor is already dead.”
“What if he’s not?”
“Then it’s a trap. He’s anticipated that we’ll try to rescue Igor and he’s going to be prepared. All that will lead to is more dead bodies.”
“So your plan is to do nothing?” he asks coldly.
“My plan is to play the long game. This is not about winning the battle; it’s about winning the war. So far, Sobakin has proved himself to be cunning. Brute force isn’t going to help us here.”
“It will be a show of strength! At least he’ll think twice about moving against us.”
“Who are you kidding? He’s already decided he’s gunning for us. Returning fire with fire won’t stop him. What we need to do is lie low and wait for an opportunity to catch him off-guard.”
The silence on the other line is telling. “Is that what you’ve decided?” he asks at last.
“That’s what I’ve decided.”
“And what are you going to tell the men?”
“Exactly what I just told you.”
“Oh, perfect. I’m sure it’ll be a great comfort to them to know that, if any one of them were to be abducted carrying out our orders, you’d be sitting on your ass, ‘playing the long game.’”
I re-grip the phone in my hand. “My men will understand that sometimes, sacrifices must be made for the good of the many.”
“You are the pakhan,” he says grudgingly. “Your will, our hands.”
Even a stranger would hear the bitterness in his voice when he says those words.
I sigh as we hang up. If only Nikolai was the second brother. That one twist of fate would have solved so much about our fractured, fraught relationship.
When I go down to my bedroom, I find Lev in there, building a Lego castle three stories high.
“Where were you?” he asks, glancing towards the vintage clock on the wall.
“I had work to finish, buddy.”
“You’re always working.”
The guilt pinches away at me, same as always, but I’ve learned to ignore it. I sit down next to him but I don’t touch any of the toy bricks. I know better than to push my way into a project that’s halfway complete.
“Did you eat dinner?”
“Yeah…”
“What did you eat?”
“Mac and cheese. Mirabel tried to make me eat meat but I didn’t want to.”