“No, but if you’re in New York, then it’s my business.”
“I talk to the daddy,” Ilya mocks, clapping Nikolai on the back.
He just pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Why aren’t you in Moscow?” I jab the air, wishing it were my knife and his gut. “Where you belong.”
“Ever heard of multitasking?”
“I have and it’s a purely female skill,” Victoria taunts.
“Perhaps ‘delegation’ is a more fitting descriptor.”
“TheKrestniy Otetsdoesn’t seem like the type of guy who’d permit much delegation.”
Nikolai studies her. “How would you know enough about him to make an educated guess?”
“Eavesdropping.”
Ilya barks out a laugh. “On whom?”
“My father, of course. The asshole.” Her smile shifts. There’s sorrow at the base of it, but she overlays it with cockiness. “I used to play in his office. He rarely saw me.”
“The man’s instincts, or lack of them, explain why he died young,” Nikolai ruminates.
Victoria, after a quick look at me, studies her knees.
Nikolai being Nikolai notices but doesn’t comment on it.
“Did you know him?” she asks instead.
“Barely. I hate New York and I hate Moscow even more?—”
“Father loved it.”
“Then he should have lived there.”
Ilya raises his full shot glass. “Hear, hear.”
“None of us are fans of the city,” I say dryly. “You live long enough on its streets and you do everything you can to put it in your past.”
“I wasn’t born on the streets,” Ilya inserts, “but they certainly bred me. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much rope to hang myself as Nikolai did.”
“Why not?”
“I’m theKrestniy Otets’snephew.”
Her eyes widen. “Why are you here, then?”
“Because I loathe him as much as you loathed your father, I imagine.”
“Should you be talking to us?”
“Am I not among friends?”
Nikolai grunts. “On the days you don’t irritate the hell out of me, I suppose,da.”
“Is today one such day?”
