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Sabrina opens her mouth to give a fiery retort. It’s me who shoots her a look, asking her for once in her life not to argue.
“We’ll be back in a minute,” I say.
I hope that’s true.
I slip in the passenger seat of Nero’s car, leaving the seatbelt unbuckled. I don’t want to be restrained, not on this ride.
Nero climbs in behind the wheel—slower, stiffer. His face gives no hint of pain but he must feel it, every day.
He pulls away from the curb smoothly, one hand on the wheel. He drives like a professional, with a precision that can only be obtained by years of focused practice.
In the dark and silent car, I ponder how to begin this conversation. Nero’s presence means he already knows some of what is passing between me and Sabrina. Maybe all of it. I don’t know what she’s told him, or what he’s discovered.
Nero suffers no such hesitation. He’s as quick as his daughter.
He says, “Why do they call you the Legend?”
Sabrina told me the Gallos love to play chess. I suppose we could call this the King’s Gambit—Nero offers a benign, even generous opening. If I take it, he’s sure to spring a trap.
I try to deflect.
“It’s just an old nickname from school. We were the first class to win three years of theQuartum Bellum. I doubt anyone would use it anymore—not since your nephew won all four.”
People absolutely still say it, but I’m downplaying what now sounds ridiculous and immature in the small space of the car, coming out of the mouth of the man known as the Moriarty of Chicago.
Hoping to disarm him, I end with a statement, not a question, volleying the conversation back at him.
Nero is far from disarmed.
In a silky tone of politeness he says, “That’s right, I forgot that you knew Leo. Well enough that you convinced him and my daughter to leave school in the middle of the night and attack an armed fortress of Malina.”
Fuck me.
Nero knows everything. And he’s not pleased.
I appeal to common ground. “Leo and Sabrina were never supposed to be a part of that. I’m sure you can understand how far I would go to bring a family member home, and how impossible it is to prevent your daughter doing anything she’s set her mind to.”
The ties of family loyalty are as powerful to the Gallos as they are to the Petrovs. And Nero knows Sabrina better than I do, for better or worse.
Nero turns into the canyon, a drive I would hesitate to take at night, especially with no reduction in speed. He’s accelerating, the car flying down the dark and winding road cut deep through the mountain peaks.
“I understand,” he says, his voice cool and rational. “But understandmenow—you are a gravitational pull toward danger and chaos, and you are pulling on my daughter. Starting with the night she met you. In fact, I’ll wager that you’ve already planted the idea of her coming to Russia once she’s finished school.”
Nero sees inside my head. He has the right idea, wrong timeline. I haven’t planted a seed—I’ve grown a tree. Sabrina wants to come, I know she does. But Nero’s influence is powerful—he’s here to chop that tree to the ground.
As I remain silent, the speedometer creeps up—eighty-five, then ninety. There’s no jerk of the wheels under Nero’s steady hand, and no hint of emotion on his face.
In Russia we have a saying:In the still water, the devil dwells.I’ve never met a man with water stiller than this. Nero is ice-cold, driving a hundred miles per hour through the canyon. His breath is unchanging. No pulse in his throat. He is not afraid—not of me, or the car, or the grim reaper sitting in the backseat with his scythe hanging over our heads.
I want to stay as calm as him—I want it desperately, but heat rises up my neck, sweat prickling my palms.
I blurt out, “Russia is no different from Chicago if you’re living the life we live.”
For the first time I see anger on his face. A darkness that suffuses his features like ink in water, obscuring all but the words he throws at me like poisoned darts.
“You wear no sheep’s clothing with me. You think I don’t know the Bratva? I know you very well.”
The Gallos’ dealings with my countrymen were familiar to me before Sabrina relayed any part of it. Nero stole the Winter Diamond, the prize of the Bratva—igniting a firestorm that almost burned the Gallos to the ground.
