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I’ve done it again, gone off into my own Abby-focused world. I’m normally more disciplined than this. There’s something about the peace of this house, its comfortingly familiar feel, that seems to have slipped under my normally pretty fucking rock-solid skin.

“I’m sorry, Leon.” I toss off the vodka, putting the glass down with slightly more force than is polite, and stand up. “It’s been a long day, as I said. I should let you go.”

A wall hanging behind his head catches my eye. It’s an oriental painting on silk, a peacock in a garden with its tail fanned out. The peacock is caught in exquisite detail and vibrant color—and so familiar to me that I almost know how the silk feels under my hand.

Suddenly I’m a small child, curled up against my motheron a lumpy single bed in a small room that smells of old sweat and other people’s cooking.

“As long as we have our peacock to look over us,” she whispers against my head in Russian, “we are safe, moy syn.”

My son.

The sudden bolt of emotion that grips my entire body is such a visceral stab of pain it leaves me almost breathless.

“That print.” I nod at it, clearing my throat. “I—my family had one like that when I was very young.” I breathe in sharply, regaining control. “Sorry. I just haven’t—I don’t think I’ve ever seen another one quite like it, though I imagine it’s a common enough image.”

I shake my head and give Leon a rueful smile. “I’m not normally so fucking maudlin after vodka, I promise. My apologies. I’ll leave you to your afternoon.”

Still seated on the sofa, Leon waves me down with a slight smile. “It’s a Friday, Dimitry, and your letter was intriguing enough that I cleared my schedule for the day. I was going to ask if you might like to join me for dinner?”

I debate for a moment, but really, where do I have to go?

After I leave this room, all that happens is that I end up in some bar or another, drinking until they won’t serve me anymore. And then, most probably, picking a fight with the biggest bastard I can find and hoping he can hit hard enough to knock me out for long enough that I won’t see Abby’s face when I fall asleep.

“Sure,” I say, sitting back down. “Why not?”

I wake completely disoriented,in a dark room with a dry mouth and my heart thudding from a surfeit of alcohol.

Christ.

I sit up, reaching for the bottle of water by the bed as theevents of the previous night slowly reassert themselves.

Leon had some restaurant nearby deliver a superb three-course meal and then opened the first in a series of exceptional wines, each better than the last. He turned out to be a seriously great conversationalist, and not just about art and history. Although, having learned a lot about both since taking on this role, I found that part of the evening fascinating, especially given his almost encyclopedic knowledge of Russia, both past and present. But he was just as well-informed about boxing, which did take me by surprise, and about hunting. By the time we started in on our mutual love and respect for the crossbow, we were on to dessert and the third bottle. Up until that point it was, in fact, a perfectly respectable evening.

It was then that Leon somehow steered the conversation away from broad topics and onto Abby.

It was also about then that he produced a cognac of such venerable quality that one glass could never do it justice. I’m pretty sure that by the time we finished the bottle, I’d given Leon chapter and verse of the entire dismal saga.

Way to be professional, Dimitry.

I check my phone. It’s three a.m. Too early to start stomping about a stranger’s house. Not to mention the alcohol is still racing through my system, making me bleary and only half present.

Abby’s face floats in front of my eyes like a sinful temptation.

Normally, I don’t allow myself to linger on it.

But I’m too tired, and still too goddamn drunk, to stop the dreams from coming.

It’s only as I sink back into the alcohol-fogged twilight that I realize the dreams aren’t taking me to the good place.

They’re taking me back to the night Abby drugged me.

To the night it all started to fall apart, though I didn’t realize it back then.

8

Dimitry

Malaga, Spain