I look at it. Then at him. “Is that a trick question?”
“No.”
“Then yes.”
He pours.
I take the glass and drink without grace. The vodka burns all the way down, which helps. A little.
Mikhail comes back into the room a moment later. “Clear.”
Roman nods once. That’s apparently enough.
I put the empty glass down and reach into my coat pocket for my phone.
“There’s something else,” I say.
Roman’s attention turns back to me.
I unlock the screen and pull up the photograph. It’s not a good picture. Blurred, taken over my shoulder, just enough of a forearm and the black lines of ink beneath a cuff.
“I tried to leave the house this afternoon,” I say. “One of the new guards stopped me. I’d never seen him before.”
I hand the phone across the counter.
Roman takes it.
For the first time since I got in the car, he goes completely silent.
He studies the image too long for it to be nothing. Mikhail steps closer, glances over Roman’s shoulder, and his face changes too, though less visibly.
My pulse starts climbing again. “What is it?”
Roman doesn’t answer immediately.
He zooms in on the photo, studies the mark again, then lowers the phone.
“That belongs to my father’s men,” he says.
The room feels suddenly colder.
I stare at him. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
He looks at the image again before handing the phone back to me.
I grip the edge of the counter. “Then there’s one of his men in my father’s house.”
Roman’s expression doesn’t change, but something in him tightens. “Yes.”
“Do you think Papa knows?”
That question hangs there.
Roman doesn’t answer quickly, and the fact that he doesn’t answer at all is almost worse.
