I don’t answer because I already know.
He looks up at me. “You.”
“Yes.” That should reassure me in a narrow, ugly way. Better me than them. But I’m still worried.
Because the children were there anyway, and once bullets start moving, intention stops mattering.
Mikhail touches his jaw thoughtfully, “They knew the layout.”
“Yes.”
Mikhail says, “That doesn’t mean they came from inside.”
“No,” I say. “It means they had help from inside, or they’ve been here before.”
Katerina finds us just as Mikhail is finishing with the hedge.
She comes across the lawn fast, not running, but not far from it either. Her face is pale in that dangerous way people get after fear has worn off and anger has taken over.
She stops in front of me and looks from the shattered glass on the grass to the table on its side, then to my face. “This is because of you.”
I look at her for a second before I answer. “You don’t know that.”
Her laugh is short and ugly. “Don’t insult me.”
I don’t say anything.
She takes a step closer. “The second you showed up, this started. At lunch. In our house. My children were sitting at that table.”
“I know where they were.”
“Do you?” she snaps.
I hold her gaze. “And I was the one who got them moving before the second round came in. I didn’t see your father’s underlings anywhere.”
Her jaw tightens. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t stand there and make yourself sound like the hero.”
My jaw ticks.
This isn’t the time for temper. She’s frightened, humiliated, furious, and not wrong about the danger. I know all that. I also know the only thing she can see right now is the line between my arrival and the gunfire, and I can’t blame her for drawing it.
“I’m not making myself sound like anything,” I say. “I’m telling you what happened.”
“What happened,” she says, voice shaking now, “is that my children were in danger because of you.”
Mikhail steps farther off to the side, smart enough to make himself invisible without actually leaving. Sergei is still near the terrace with two of his men, speaking in low, furious bursts to someone on the phone, but I can feel him listening too.
Katerina lowers her voice. “You bring this with you.”
That gets under my skin.
I keep my voice level anyway. “You think I arranged for someone to fire at a lunch table?”
“No.” She folds her arms tightly, like she has to hold herself together. “I think men like you have enemies, and the rest of us pay for it.”
