Inside, the club is worse than I remember. Low ceiling. Red bulbs. Smoke hanging thick enough to sting the eyes. The floor shines with spilled liquor. Men sit in booths half-hidden byshadow, laughing too loudly with women who smile like their rent depends on it.
I find her almost immediately.
Anya stands near a table in a black dress that’s too tight, too short, and clearly not hers. She keeps pulling at the hem when she thinks no one is looking. Her hair is pinned badly, strands slipping around her face. She’s trying to smile at the men in the booth, but the smile keeps failing at the edges.
She thinks she understands attention.
She doesn’t understand this kind.
A man at the table leans toward her.
Leonid Markov.
I make it my business to know every cockroach that crawls through this city, especially the ones who survive by feeding on desperate women. My father only notices men when they become useful or threatening; I notice them while they are still small enough to crush.
Leonid finds girls at clubs like this and offers them better money elsewhere. Elsewhere usually means a locked room, a passport taken, a debt invented.
I watch his hand close around Anya’s wrist, and everything in me stills.
She freezes. Then she smiles, small and polite, trying to pull free without making trouble. That makes my anger worse.
She’s trying to be careful because she knows she is alone.
Leonid says something. She answers. He keeps holding her.
I have killed men for less.
Viktor stands close enough to speak without looking at me. “Do you want him removed?”
“No.”
My voice is calm. Too calm.
Because I have already decided.
Leonid Markov is dead.
Not because he’s a trafficker, though that would be reason enough. Not because he works out of a club that should have been burned to the ground years ago.
Because he touched her.
Anya gets away from him, and flees toward the service hallway. Leonid waits maybe thirty seconds before following. I move after him.
By the time I reach the corridor, the music is muffled behind the walls. The hallway smells of bleach, beer, and damp concrete. A single bulb flickers above the back exit.
Then I hear her.
“Let go of me.”
Leonid has her by the arm, dragging her toward the side door. She tries to twist away, but he’s heavier, stronger, used to girls being frightened into silence.
My hand goes inside my coat.
“Stop fighting,” he snaps. He shoves her against the wall hard enough that her head jerks back.
That’s when everything inside me goes quiet.
I have always trusted that quiet. Rage makes men sloppy. Quiet makes them accurate.
