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My heart twists in my chest. “If I have to.”
I can see the tears glossing her eyes, the edges turning red. She works her jaw. “How did my father come to owe you money?”
“We have a number of establishments scattered throughout Moscow. Gambling dens. From what I understand, he was on a losing streak.”
“How much?”
I hate the way her voice trembles. I want nothing more than to reach across the table and take her hand in mine, to brush her tears away.
“It doesn’t matter how much.”
“It does to me.”
“Nine-hundred thousand rubles.”
Nikita, understandably, looks like she’s about to be sick. “My dad lost his job recently. Did you know that?”
“I didn’t know.”
“But if you had, would you have gone easier on him?”
“Nikita—”
“Answer me.”
I grind my teeth. “It’s not a question of whether I’m hard or easy on Erik. The fact of the matter was, and continues to be, that he owes my family money. He must pay it back.”
“Can’t you make an exception?”
It’s a simple question, but the answer is complicated. Far too complicated for me to try and explain.
“If I make an exception, it’ll make me look lenient. And if I look lenient, our enemies will have no trouble leveraging that against us.”
“So you have to hound a man for what I’m sure you consider pocket money just to save face? Tell me, Leo, how much money do you make in a month? A week? Aday? What my father owes you is chump change.”
“That’s not the point. He owes what he owes. Tell me, if one of your dancer friends owed you a handful of rubles, would you not ask for them to pay you back?”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
Nikita glances away. “Have you ever hurt people? When they don’t pay you back.”
I think very carefully before I speak. I know she wants the truth, but it would only terrify her. If I’m being perfectly honest, yes. Yes, I have had to twist an arm here and there. A littlemotivationis what we call it.
Do I particularly enjoy that aspect of debt collecting? No.
But do I feel bad about it? Also no.
To me, this is all part of the job. It’s a part of my expectations.
I must be silent for a little too long, because Nikita looks at me sharply. She’s never looked at me like that before—and I hate it. I don’t want her to be upset with me, but in the same breath, I also completely understand.
“So when you picked me up from the side of that road, did you know who I was?”
“No.”
“And when you came to the Bolshoi,” she says carefully, “did you really have no idea who I was?”
