Page 66 of Nothing More

Ian sat in the armchair opposite, a drink of his own in his hand. “I think I may have been able to mitigate the worst of it.”

She took a long slug of her drink. “That’s just it, though, isn’t it? We haven’t begun to see the worst of it.”

He flashed a quick, flat smile. “In my experience, darling, it’s better to focus on the parts of it you can control.”

“Don’t you controleverything?”

He shrugged. “More or less.”

Fifteen

In a much shabbier part of town, Toly sat scrunched down in the passenger seat of a black, nineties Trans-Am with deeply tinted windows, hood pulled over his head for good measure. He watched the front of a restaurant he knew well, a little Russian kitchen that served the tastiest shchi he’d found in the city.

It was called Galina’s after the immigrant grandmother who’d first opened it and imbued its menu with her family’s recipes. Long-gone, she’d been replaced at first by family, and then sold to new owners, but the recipes remained authentic to Galina’s originals. Two front windows, one on either side of the glass front door, boasted flickering neon signage:Russian Family Cuisine, and the same printed in Cyrillic on decals below. The glass was fogged in the cold, the light beyond warm and inviting; Toly could see that the vinyl tables were all full.

Apparently, the Kozlov bratva – Misha’s newer, more ambitious American branch of it – had bought the place several months ago, kept on all the regular staff, but installed operations in the apartments above. It was no longer merely a cozy, fragrant place to gorge oneself on Russian staples, but a front, also.

He well knew that nothing was sacred, but it filled him with no small amount of dismay to think of Galina’s as tainted.

He’d been sitting here for a good half-hour, and with the engine off, the interior of the car had grown cold. His breath misted white when he exhaled. He’d been watching the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk, searching for suspicious activity, but everyone who’d peeked in the windows or gone inside looked distinctly civilian. He hadn’t spotted any of the usual red flags, the air of caution and perceptiveness he himself would have displayed.

Finally, a familiar figure emerged from the front door, head ducked against the wind, gloved hands in the pockets of a jacket too thin for the weather. Shiny black hair swayed in the breeze, where it emerged from beneath a black ballcap, and Toly had the passing thought that, if seen together, they could have almost looked like brothers. Half-brothers, at least.

Kat hit the remote and the lights flared inside the car just before he opened the driver door and slid inside. He had the engine cranked before his door was shut, and pulled away from the curb the moment he could.

“Well?” Toly asked, scooting upright in his seat once more. The window tint was dark – no one could see them inside – but he’d learned caution was never misplaced.

Kat fiddled with the heater knobs. “Business is booming. It was standing room only when I got in, and I had to eat at the counter.”

Toly wondered what he’d had, but didn’t ask.

Heat properly blasting, Kat reached into his jacket pocket and fished out a greasy wax bag that he set on the console between them. “Here. I got you one.” It was pirozhki, going by the smell.

“Thanks.” He hadn’t eaten a bite all day, and his stomach was starting to cramp with hunger.

As he unwrapped the pirozhki, Kat continued: “The customers were mostly families. A few little old grandmothers crowded up front; I think they were a book club, based on their conversation. They were all twittering like girls over someone named Lestat.”

Toly finished chewing – Galina’s pirozhki had a super flaky layer of pastry, and a perfect onion to beef ratio in the filling; heavenly – and said, “You never heard of Anne Rice?”

“Oh. Is that who that was?” Kat asked, flatly, without interest. “I spotted a couple of teenagers by the bathroom door, lots of piercings and dyed hair, playing on their phones, but they didn’t look like bratva.”

“Nothing suspicious, then?” What a waste of an afternoon, Toly thought sourly. When he could have been…

No, no. Best getthatout of his mind.

“There’s an office past the bathroom,” Kat said. “There were cameras in the hall, so I couldn’t walk over and get a closer look or try to eavesdrop, but the door was open and I saw guys in suits. One of them came over to shut the door, and he had the look. A ring on his right hand, big gold wolf’s head.”

Toly passed his thumb over the warm, plain silver band he wore on the ring finger of his own right hand, the one that covered the snarling wolf head tattooed there with shocking detail. One of three tats he hadn’t been able to bring himself to cover or alter. Those three, small, damning designs that served as daily reminders of what he’d been, and which would mark him out if he ever fell into the wrong hands.

The pirozhki turned to lead in his stomach. “That’s them, then.” He forced himself to take another bite, tried to swallow a sudden surge of dread with it. “We didn’t used to camp out in our fronts, though.”

“Maybe they weren’t; maybe it was just a visit to collect money. Or maybe things have changed since you were in.” Kat’s thumb tapped on the wheel as he took the next turn, and Toly felt the quick cut of his gaze, the sharp scrutiny of it. “You know this guy. The new Pakhan. Misha, right?”

Toly shoved the last corner of pastry into his mouth and forced it down; all that flaky, buttery filo got caught in his throat, flakes sticking to the dryness there. “I used to.”

“Then you’ll have the best insight on how he’s running things.” Kat sounded a little impatient, and like he was inviting him to join him in speculating about the goings-on of the bratva.

Toly wadded up the wax paper and shoved it in his jacket pocket with a sigh. Brushed pastry flakes off his jeans into a cupped palm and stowed them in a pocket, too, rather than dirty up the spotless interior of Kat’s car; that earned him a barely-audible “thanks,” and a lessening of the tension across the other man’s shoulders.