Chapter one
Mikhail
Undefined
**Chapter 1**
"You are quiet," Dmitri says. He stands by the wet bar, pouring vodka like it is water, which to us it might as well be. "Too quiet. You’re brooding. That’s never good for my blood pressure."
"I am not brooding."
"You are staring at your glass like it just stole your last dollar."
I glare at him. Dmitri is my brigadier, my right hand, the man who has held my gun and my secrets for fifteen years. He is also an asshole when the mood strikes him.
"What the fuck is wrong with you tonight?" Viktor asks from the couch. Younger. Hungrier. Still stupid enough to ask questions he does not want answered. "We should be celebrating the Lennox deal, but you look like we’ve just been sentenced to The Black Dolphin."
I quickly knock on the table three times. “Nyet. Never that hellhole.” I shake off a shudder. Those men. Bad, maybe, but still men, reduced to empty husks as they waste away in our worst prison.
"Anton Ismailov sat at the restaurant tonight," I say. My voice comes from far away, disconnected from my chest. "His son on his knee. His wife beside him. He touched the boy's hair, and the boy did not flinch. The boy looked at him like he was..."
"God?" Viktor supplies.
"Immortal."
The room goes quiet except for the settling fire. "You want a family." Dmitri's voice cuts, sharp with accusation, disbelief threading underneath.
"I want what everyone wants."
"A nap? A decent blowjob? More money than God can count?"
"I want to know that when I die, this continues," I say it flat. Dead. Emotion is a thing I buried in Vladivostok, in the frozen ground behind a fish processing plant, along with my first kill and the last of my childhood. "The Ismailovs will still be here in fifty years. Their grandchildren will own the buildings we protected. What will we own? Who comes after us?"
Dmitri exchanges a look with Viktor. Suspicion passes between them. Have I lost my mind? Maybe I have.
"Boss." Viktor chooses his words, each one placed like a stone on a grave. "You are forty-two, not eighty-two. You have time to find a nice Russian girl and fill a nursery."
"A nice Russian girl," I repeat.
They laugh.
Dmitri straightens, vodka forgotten. Viktor sits up. The air snaps, charged and ready.
This is what we do. We don’t sit with sentiment.
I finish my drink. "Back to business, brothers."
***
The warehouse breathes cold. Metal ribs. Concrete skin. It is mine, yet it’s been taken over by someone else. A mistake no one will make again. Dmitri is to my left, Viktor my right. Two others flank the exit. We are shadows until we are not.
Amber light pools on the concrete floor like spilled honey. Like a theater. Like a church.
The women sit in rows of velvet chairs, wearing figure-hugging dresses and holding numbered placards as if they are art pieces to be bid upon.
They are not crying, chained, or beaten. Some are nervous, yes. Hands twisting in laps. Lips bitten. But others smile as if they are at a debutante ball.
Resigned. Willing. What the fuck.
