Page 24 of Marrying the Pakhan

“Kazan,” he says, before I even ask.

“How’d he take it?”

“About like you’d expect. Denied everything for the first ten minutes, then folded the second I put the actual invoice numbers in front of him.” Dimitri takes a pull from the bottle.

“He’s paying back the difference over the next two deliveries. No more creative math after that, or we find a new distributor and make sure every other supplier in the city hears exactly why.”

“Good. Any pushback from his people, or was it just him?”

“Just him. His crew didn’t even know he was skimming, from what I could tell. Man’s got a gambling problem he’s apparently been trying to solve one short case of vodka at a time.” Dimitri shakes his head. “Almost feel bad for him. Almost.”

“He’ll survive it.”

“He’ll survive it broke and embarrassed, which is probably the point.” Dimitri sets the bottle down, and his voice shifts, careful in a way I recognize immediately. “He also mentioned something else. Might be nothing.”

“Go on.”

“Said he’s had a couple of new buyers sniffing around asking about our numbers particularly. Not fishing for a deal. Fishing for information.”

“Whose crew?”

“He didn’t know, or he’s smart enough not to say. Could be nothing, could be somebody doing homework before making a move somewhere down the line.”

“Keep an ear out. Anything more specific, I want to know immediately.”

“Sure thing.” He studies me for a second, a question sitting behind his eyes that he doesn’t ask outright. “How’s the kid settling in?”

“Better than I expected.”

“And Harper?”

“Also better than I expected.”

Dimitri doesn’t push further. He just nods and finishes his beer. After he leaves, I stand in the quiet kitchen a while longer.

Thinking about buyers asking questions they have no business asking, and about a girl asleep upstairs who trusted me enough tonight to fall asleep mid-sentence, and about her aunt somewhere down the hall in a robe that’s going to be the reason I don’t sleep well tonight either.

Two very different kinds of danger, sitting in the same house, and only one of them I actually know how to fight.

The other one I’ve been losing since the night she walked into my club and mistook me for someone I’ve never once been.

10

HARPER

I’ve worn the same gray suit to every meeting with Denise for weeks, and this morning I stand in front of the mirror for ten straight minutes convinced it suddenly looks wrong on me, like the fabric itself knows what today is.

Viktor straightens my collar in the hallway before we leave. It’s unnecessary. My collar’s fine, but I let him do it anyway because his hands are steady and mine haven’t stopped shaking since I woke up.

“You’re going to be fine,” he says.

“You don’t know that.”

“No, but you didn’t fall apart in front of me at the club, and you had a lot more to lose that night than you think you do today.”

It’s not exactly reassurance, but it steadies me. We drive to the courthouse with his hand resting over mine on the console the entire way, saying nothing else.

The courtroom is smaller than I expected, wood paneling instead of the marble I pictured, a judge who looks perpetually unimpressed by everyone in front of her. Denise sits beside me at our table, calm in the specific way that means she’s run through every version of today in her head already.