Page 19 of Cruel Demands

“No,” she says quietly. “Of course not. You have your guards.”

I stop at the doorway. For a moment, neither of us speaks. There are many things my mother is too weak to do now. She cannot walk without assistance. She cannot lift the heavy teapot she insists tastes better than anything poured by the staff. She cannot sleep through the night without pain.

But she can still put a knife between my ribs with one sentence.

My phone vibrates again. This time, the name on the screen does not belong to a politician. It belongs to a man who puts knives into ribs for less than one sentence.

She should be grateful I have my guards.

I turn the phone over in my palm before my mother can read it. “I have to go.”

Her gaze flicks to the phone, then to my face. For a heartbeat, she is not the fragile woman wrapped in blankets. She is Nikita Koroleva, wife of the late pakhan, mother to the man who inherited his sins, and she sees more than I want her to. “Mikhail, this driver,” she says, her voice grim.

“Politics, Mama.” I accept her hand against my face for one brief moment, and leave before she can ask me questions I will have to lie about. I do not say just politics. It is not true.

Outside, my driver has brought the car to the front steps. A guard opens the rear door while another stands beside the gates, one hand beneath his coat.

My two phones rest in separate pockets.

The driver looks at me in the mirror as I settle into the back seat. “Where to, sir?”

I look toward the road.

Arkady is waiting in one direction. Waiting to take me to a driver, currently tied to a chair in a warehouse, who may know who sold access to my routes. He will be tortured either way.

Olga is in the other direction, gathering the papers that will improve thousands of lives, raising teachers’ salaries across Moscow Oblast.

Both require only my hand.

I consider the question as the gates begin to open.

I have not yet decided.

4

TAYLOR

By the time the third round of shots hits the table two days later, I have learned that hope makes me reckless.

“To Taylor,” Anya says, lifting her glass high enough that vodka sloshes dangerously close to her fingers. “Future political genius.”

“I’m an intern,” I remind her.

“I said what I said.” She drinks her shot in one slow, measured swallow that makes me cringe for her.

I got the internship. Not just the interview. Not a vague promise that someone would call. An actual paid internship with the Office of the Governor of Moscow Oblast, beginning tomorrow morning at nine. So naturally, in true Russian fashion, I am celebrating by getting drunk the night before my first day.

I’m twenty. It will be fine. That’s what Petyr keeps telling me, anyway.

“Maybe you learn state secrets, steal them, and retire to Monaco,” he says optimistically. He leans across the small round table, grinning. “I would visit you.”

“You wouldn’t be invited.”

His hand flies to his chest. “After everything we have been through?”

Anya groans. “Not the pity pastry again. He will never let it go.”

I laugh, and for a moment, the sound feels too light to belong to me.