Page 45

Fuck.
Alexei was here.
Beside me once again.
“Do you have photos from the run?”Bradley demanded, saving me from further humiliation.“We need to see them.”
“I haveaphoto.Unfortunately.”
Alex pulled his phone from his back pocket, and I made the mistake of glancing down.The man had thighs like tree trunks and the ass of a— No, I wasnotgoing there.
The phone got passed around the table, and when it reached Emmy, she burst out laughing.
“I can’t believe you wore it.”
Bradley got indignant.“Hey, it was agreatcostume.”
“It was a fucking sunflower.”
A sunflower?“You dressed up?As a flower?”
Alex shifted in his seat.“Only for a bet.”
“Plus he raised over a hundred thousand bucks for Live without Limits,” Bradley said.“It’s a charity that helps disabled children, and the people there doamazingwork, which means we should definitely be drinking champagne this evening.Where’s the waiter?”
Emmy took a deep breath.“Bradley, you can’t turn everything into an excuse to drink champagne.”
“What, you expect me to drink Prosecco?”
“Oh, the fucking hardship,” she muttered.“One bottle.”
The phone got as far as me, and sure enough, Alex was dressed up as a sunflower with leafy green track pants, a yellow shirt, and petals around his face.
“See?Isn’t he cute?”Bradley leaned over.“I made the petals out of modelling foam and hand-painted them.”
“An oak tree would have been more appropriate.”
“An oak tree?The leaves would take forever to make, but I can bear it in mind for next time.”
“There will be no next time,” Alex growled.
“So you say.”Bradley turned to me.“Can I get pre-made leaves, or will I have to shape them out of Worbla?”
Alex frowned.“How would Darya know?”
“She runs an excellent craft store.It stocks the entire range of La Coutoura textured yarn.”
“Acraft store?You swapped your Makarov for a glue gun?”
Not swapped, exactly—now I had both.I shrugged.“For the record, I preferred the SR-1 Vektor to the Makarov.”
Thankfully, the waiter showed up, and eating soon took precedence over talking.This reminded me of the old days, except without Ilya’s raging misogyny and Pavel’s juvenile sense of humour.The food was better too.No shchi, no kholodets, and no dried herring.Between courses, we talked about weapons and politics and international relations, all subjects I’d been out of the loop on for the past several years, save for what I saw on the news.And before dessert, conversation turned to Ottie Marquette because Alex wasn’t up to speed on that particular topic.The news of a possible Russian connection piqued my interest but also raised more questions than it answered.
“What if the police presence in St.Petersburg was a coincidence?Raids happen all the time.If a business owner doesn’t hand over the required bribes…” I made a cutting motion across my throat.“They pay, one way or another.”
“You really believe that?”Emmy asked.
“Coincidences happen.Or did you have an ulterior motive when you walked into my store today?”