Page 14 of The Breath Before Forever

“What changed?” Vera asked, and at the prompt of his questioning glance he tossed over his shoulder, she added, “No offense, but it’s not like you’ve been very talkative.”

Igor didn’t deny it. “Things often weigh on my mind, yes? It’s my personal deal with the devil, or so I was told.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed, honestly surprised. “I thought maybe you were mad at me, too.”

“Who else am I mad at?”

Vera had better things to do than play word games on a long—and relatively boring—drive, so she went straight for the gut when she said, “Are you telling me that you’re not mad at Vaslav, then?”

Igor remained silent.

She had her answer.

“But,” the man manning the vehicle said, speaking up first, “that doesn’t also mean I am mad at you.”

Vera didn’t understand that at all. Why wouldn’t he be angry with her? She didn’t need Igor to say he cared for and looked after young Kiril for her to have already put those details together. And if not for what Vaslav had planned regarding the ownership of The Swan House, and planting a forged deed in the office of a dead man during an active investigation into said malfeasance, then Kiril wouldn’t have found himself in trouble.

She wasn’t dumb.

Vera connected the fucking dots.

“You thought I blamed you?” Igor asked when Vera’s silence in the front seat stretched on.

She shrugged as if it would help her explain, but the meek action didn’t even catch the man’s attention in the front seat. “I’ve been told I do that sometimes—take on faults that are not my own.”

Old habits were hard to break.

Igor’s tired sigh echoed from the front seat, and he visibly tightened his knuckles around the steering wheel until the leather squeaked. “For what it’s worth,” he told her, “very little about what has happened can be drawn back to you. And it doesn’t matter anyway. Kiril is fine.”

That was news to her.

“Define fine.”

She didn’t miss the roll of his eyes, but he answered nonetheless. “I took care of it.”

Of him. She heard what he didn’t say.

“Just because Vaslav refused to do something didn’t also mean I had to,” Igor said in a low mutter. “Mind you, don’t expect to see the kid hanging around like he used to. I’ve got plans for Kiril. Not one of them includes him going back to jail.”

“And you think he will,” Vera pressed. “Get himself in more trouble, I mean. If he’s around—”

Us, she almost said.

Igor interrupted before she could. “Things that are meant to happen will happen, Vera. That’s not really my point, yeah?”

“So, what is?”

“Vas,” the man said simply. “And Kiril, if I’m being fair. The kid’s never going to tell Vas no. It doesn’t even matter what he asked Kiril to do. The answer would unequivocally be yes.”

Vera connected with that statement better than Igor could possibly understand. Actually, maybe Igor was the only other soul on the earth that could relate to what it was like to be unable to refuse Vaslav, Each just had a different reason for why.

“Right now, Kiril can’t afford what saying yes might mean,” Igor said after a moment.

The rain the weatherman had predicted would follow Moscow for the better part of the weekend chose that very moment to start dumping down. She felt the car slowing down as the heavy splatters soaked the passenger window and rolled across the glass in rivulets. Despite the wild way Igor tended to drive, even he wasn’t willing to take the slushy, rural roads without a bit of extra caution in bad weather.

“But fuck,” the man in front swore, pulling Vera from her otherwise wandering thoughts, “the thing is, I don’t know why I even bother to try. Kiril would run his ass back to Dubna the second he could if Vas would have him.” He slapped his hands to the steering wheel. “Like I said—what’s gonna happen will happen.”

She heard life was more fun when people let it all happen that way, but now didn’t seem like the right time to point it out.