Page 56 of Cruel Lies

She just needs to be reminded precisely how hot it can get.

The door opens without a knock, which means it's the one person in this building who's never once knocked in his life. "Ruh-roh. You look like someone canceled Christmas." Navi ambles in, hands in the pockets of his suit. He drops into one of the torture chairs across from my desk, throws a leg over the arm, and grins at me. "Or like you got dumped. Did you get dumped, Ro? Is that what this face is?"

"No, cousin, that's just how my face looks."

"No, no, no. This is one you save for special occasions." He taps a faux-thoughtful finger against his pursed lips. "Could this possibly have anything to do with the ravishing woman I passed coming out of the elevator?"

"Navi, are you familiar with the phrase, 'Shut the fuck up'?"

"If I had a nickel, I sure as hell wouldn't be working for you." He waves a lazy hand. "This is a fun turn of events. Who is she?"

I drop down behind my desk and grimace. "The woman is not on today's agenda."

"See, that's how I know she's thewholeagenda."

I glare at my cousin. He's an idiot, a fact I remind him of constantly, but unfortunately, he's also the only family I have left and the only person left on this earth I give a damn about.

The other thing he is is relentless. He never stops. Come hell or high water, come an alien invasion or the nuclear apocalypse, he just keeps going.

So I do the only thing that works on Navi.

I give him the truth. A small one, anyway.

"Her name is Calista Bradshaw. Her husband came to me looking to gut her in the divorce."

Navi's grin flickers. "And?"

"And I took his retainer, sat on his case, and before I could tell him he was a worthless piece of shit, she told him herself."

Navi lets out a low whistle. "Be still my heart."

"She's asked me to be her lawyer."

"Naturally, you said no."

"Naturally."

He studies me carefully, the leg over the armrest going still. "But you didn't send her packing, did you, Ro?"

"That's all you're getting for today, you fucking hyena. We have actual work to do."

He grins, but he's satisfied enough with the morsel I tossed him to let it go for the time being. "Fire away then, boss."

"The Pyotr issue does not look good for us."

His grin fades a notch. Not all the way—it never comes down entirely. But it thins into the shape it takes when we've crossed from teasing into the real deal.

"Yeah," he says. "We do. That's actually why I came up, before I got distracted by your tragic little heartbroken face." He swings his leg off the arm of the chair and sits up properly, forearms on his knees. "It's bad, cousin. Worse than bad."

"He left the country?"

"Thursday," confirms Navi. "Aeroflot to Istanbul, then who knows. He did what you told him, credit where it's due. He didn't call, didn't linger, didn't try to skim on the way out the door." He rubs a hand over his jaw. "But Ro, he was the whole machine. Without him, things are already starting to get a little loopy."

I had hoped, when I first learned about Pyotr's attempted disappearing act, that the stopgap measures we'd put in place would be enough to keep things running until we'd fully transitioned to a post-Pyotr era.

Seems like I was wrong.

"The main issue," Navi continues, "is that Pyotr didn't do a very good job of actually telling his replacements how things worked. The man had a system in his head that nobody else could see. He'd move a payment through six businesses in a night and it'd come out the other side looking like a dentist in Queens got reimbursed for a conference in Tampa." He leans back. "Thebooks look clean because hemadethem look clean. Manually. Every week. He was the one keeping the seams from showing."