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“Mom, I can explain—”

“I am sure you can. And I am sure you will do it over breakfast.” Her voice was quite pleasant. It’s the pleasant ones you have to watch. “Which is in fifteen minutes. In the dining room. With your father. Present.”

I went white.

I felt Maksim come up behind me on the landing, silent as a cat, and lay a hand between my shoulder blades. I didn’t turn. I couldn’t. He’d put on a black shirt, buttoned to the throat, and his hair was combed. He looked like a man about to face a firing squad with excellent posture.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pendleton,” he said. “Mr. Pendleton.”

“Mr. Volkov,” said my father.

He had not raised his voice, because Richard Pendleton never has. He stood at the foot of the stairs in his pressed gray suit and his gold cufflinks, sixty-one years old and lean as a rake, with his silver hair combed straight back and an expression I have never, in twenty-six years, been able to read. He was looking only at Maksim, and he looked at him the way he looks at a balance sheet.

“You are up early,” he said.

“I am always up early.”

“And you slept well?”

“Exceedingly well,” said Maksim. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Hm.”

My father turned away and walked into the dining room. My mother followed, with the tulip. Jenny gave me a huge-eyed look and mouthed the words Oh my God, and scampered after them.

I stood on the stairs with my heart going like a jackhammer.

“I’m dead,” I whispered.

“You are not dead.”

“I’m dead. I’m going to be dead meat.”

“Lex.” He took my hand and squeezed it. “I am here.”

“You don’t know my dad.”

“I know what I have seen.”

“You saw him look at you for four seconds. He looked at a Japanese acquisition for that long once and then he bought the whole company.”

“Then he is a decisive man. I approve.”

“Maksim!”

“Breathe.” He tugged me gently down the stairs. “In. Out. We will do it together.”

I breathed in. I breathed out. I followed him into the dining room.

Our dining room is a long one, with twelve chairs and a polished table and a chandelier, and an enormous oil painting of my great-grandfather looking severe over the mantel. Breakfast had been laid out on the sideboard, with eggs and bacon and croissants and fruit and a pot of coffee the size of a fire hydrant. My mother sat at one end, and my father sat at the other, and Jenny had planted herself in the middle next to a spare chair and was vibrating.

We sat. Maksim took the chair next to me. Someone poured coffee.

“So,” said my father, spreading a napkin on his knee. “Finally you’ve found a partner.”

I froze with a piece of toast in my hand.

“I beg your pardon?”