"He's not—" I twisted against the zip ties, found the kid's eyes, found Kastelani's back. "His name's Renko. You hear me? Renko. He's nobody; he's not a Laskin; he doesn't know shit about any diamonds; he's just a dumb kid who—"
Something hard and metallic struck the side of my skull.
The road tipped up white, and the kid's face went sideways in it, mouth still open, and then the white folded down to a point.
Then nothing at all.
I'd gone into Aleksi’scloset because I couldn't be in the rest of the flat anymore.
It was the one room that was properly his. The living room was a showroom, and the kitchen was Irina's, and the bedroom we'd wrecked between us so many times it belonged to nobody. The closet still smelled of him: cologne and leather and the cold iron smell that never quite came out of a man who carried guns for a living. I stood in it the way you'd stand in a chapel. I'd no business there, but I went in anyway.
His suits hung in their row, all the wrong cut, the ones I'd been on him about since the day we met. I ran the backs of my knuckles down a sleeve. It was good wool, ruined by a tailor who'd been phoning it in. The new suit he’d been measured for would be different. It’d be perfect because I’d insisted upon it.
Now, I was terrified I’d have to bury him in it.
Funny, wasn’t it? A year ago, my biggest worry was the weather—which, to be fair, is the biggest worry of every Scotsman. But now here I was, in love with an idiot whobrandished a gun for a living, fretting he’d not return. I’d turned into my mum.
I took out my phone for the hundredth time. The last message I'd sent him sat there with no answer under it. Sent. Not read. I'd typed it an hour ago, and it had gone nowhere. I didn’t know if that was good or bad. I didn’t know anything except that Mr. K would kill Aleksi the first chance he got and not feel an ounce of guilt.
It didn’t sit right with me, this moving the operation forward by several days. It reeked of a trap, but Aleksi had refused to listen. I wouldn’t have either. All I had was a feeling, and that was worth less than Aleksi’s confidence since he’d been doing this his whole damn life.
But it was after midnight now, and he hadn’t texted, called, or anything. Even when he was being a cold bastard about it, even when it was nothing buteat somethingorgo to bed, he texted. Now there was nothing, and Gregori was parked on the door like a gargoyle who'd taken a vow of silence. The not-knowing was driving me mad.
So I was pacing. And I'd have gone on pacing till dawn if I hadn't heard the music.
It was coming from down the hall, from behind Niko's door. Not his usual weepy French stuff, none of the soap operas. This was something bright and fast and electronic, all sugar and no spine, the kind of thing they'd play in a club where the drinks cost more than the door. I stood outside the door a moment, because a man's entitled to his own taste in shite music, and then I heard a second voice under it, light, and I thought:he's got somebody in there.
That stopped me. Aleksi'd cleared the flat for security, and here was Niko with a guest. I knocked once and pushed the door, ready to give him hell for it.
And then I stopped in the doorway. Niko was alone at the vanity with his back to me, singing along to the music, an open shoebox in front of him and a tube of lip gloss beside it, uncapped. I'd have backed out quietly, but he caught me in the mirror.
"Fin." He reached to close the box.
"Sorry. I knocked, but the music—"
"You can't tell Aleksi."
I came closer instead of answering. The box was Paris-stamped, the tissue folded back. Burgundy suede heels, soles red as a fresh cut.
"Are thoseLouboutins?"
"You mean my heels?" He said it slowly, watching me like I might be having him on.
"The suede? In the burgundy?" I had one out of the tissue before he could tell me no, turning it to the light. The sole was the real lacquer, the proper stuff, not the painted-on rubbish I'd seen a hundred chancers try to pass off in that warehouse. "Oh, that's the genuine article, that. Look at the pitch on it. A hundred and twenty mil if it's an inch. How in God's name does anybody walk in these?"
"You own it. That's the whole trick." Then, quieter, with his eyes on the shoe in my hands: "Étienne bought them in Cannes. He likes me in—" He stopped himself. He took the shoe back off me, gentle about it, and set it in the tissue like it was sleeping. "Well. He bought them."
There was a whole country behind that unfinished sentence. I'd have walked into it if he'd left the door open another second, but he closed the box, and the easy mask came down over him like a coat going on. He reached out to turn down the music.
"Niko," I said. "Has he called you?"
"Who? Étienne?"
"Aleksi. He's not texted me since the track. Not a word, Niko, and he always sends a word." I heard my own voice going thin at the edges. "It's gone midnight."
"He’s working." Niko shrugged, the easy masculine charm sliding back over him like he was pulling the wig off a second time. "These things run long. He’ll come home stinking of cordite at four in the morning and step on something of mine and we’ll fight about it, same as always."
"And if he doesn't?"
