I go still inside it.
“You’ll freeze,” I say, though he’s wearing a shirt and waistcoat as if this temperature is merely a suggestion.
“No.”
“You’re not human.”
“That has been suggested.”
His jacket swallows me. The sleeves hang too long, the shoulders too broad, the hem brushing my thighs. I should look ridiculous. I probably do look ridiculous.
I don’t care because it’s warm.
A black car waits near the curb. A sleek, low, expensive machine that looks like it was built for men who do not stand in taxi lines. The driver steps out before we reach it. Another man appears from somewhere near the rear door, dressed in a dark coat, earpiece visible for half a second before he turns his head.
My steps slow.
The driver says something in Russian. Roman replies in the same language, low and effortless. The men take our luggage before I can reach for mine. Efficiently, like this has all been arranged long before I agreed to any of it.
I look at the car. Then at the men. Then at Roman.
“What are you,” I ask, trying for humor because something under my ribs has begun to tighten, “a mafia boss?”
Roman opens the rear door for me. He doesn’t answer. He only smirks.
My smile falters.
It’s a small thing, that smirk. Almost nothing. But something about it moves through me wrong.
I tell myself I’m being dramatic.
Rich men have drivers. Rich men have assistants. Rich men fly first class and have people take luggage and make arrangements without asking.
That does not mean anything.
I slide into the car.
The inside smells like leather and winter. The seats are warm beneath me. Roman joins me a moment later, and the doorcloses with a soft, expensive thud that seals us away from the airport noise.
As we pull away, I watch Moscow appear in pieces.
Wide roads. Low sky. Bare trees with black branches. Snow gathered in dirty white piles along the edges of the street. Buildings I do not recognize, signs I cannot read quickly enough, people wrapped in dark coats moving with their heads bent against the wind.
Just a real city waking beneath a cold sky.
Still, I press closer to the window.
Roman sees. “You expected it to be prettier.”
“No,” I say. “I expected not to feel anything.”
“And?”
I watch a woman in a red scarf cross the street, one hand holding her hat against the wind. “I feel too much.”
He says nothing.
My phone is dead and black in my handbag, but I can feel it anyway. Like a stone. Like a threat.
