Page 50 of The Pakhan's Secret Babies
The way she stood when I leaned in. Completely still, not moving toward me or away from me, just waiting, and I was close enough to feel the warmth coming off her skin and to catch the scent of whatever she was wearing, and I pressed my mouth to her cheek and felt her go very still under it, stiller than she already was, a held breath.
I pulled back, and she stood there for a half second afterward with her eyes not quite focused, and then she looked at the window.
I think about the vow I made.
I have made a great many promises in my life. Promises to the organization, to the men who work for me, to the council, to the structure of a world that runs on the understanding that certain things are absolute.
I have kept all of them because a man who does not keep his promises is a man who cannot be trusted, and a man who cannot be trusted in my world does not remain in my world for long.
I vowed to protect this child with my life.
I said it because it is true. I said it because in the room in that moment with those men standing there and the officiant and Elena in her ivory dress, it was the only thing I had that was worth saying.
But I am also aware, sitting in this car watching the city slide past the window, of what that vow costs in my world. What it means to have something you have promised your life to protect. What it does to a man’s decisions when there is something he cannot afford to lose.
I have never had anything I could not afford to lose.
I look at Elena’s profile.
That is no longer true.
The penthouse lobby has four men on duty tonight instead of the usual two. Elena steps out of the elevator, and her eyes move across the lobby the way they move across every room she enters, cataloging, noting, and I watch her register the extra men without commenting on it. She looks at me once, a quick glance, and then she looks back at the lobby and keeps walking.
She doesn’t ask.
Kostya meets us at the penthouse. He shows Elena through the main rooms with the focused brevity of someone running a security orientation dressed as a house tour, pointing out the staff schedule, the kitchen, the guest suite where her things have been moved from the Queens apartment while we were at the estate.
I watch her take it in.
She runs her hand along the kitchen counter without thinking, a slow, absent movement, taking the measure of the surface. She stops at the window in the main room and looks out at the city the way I do, but not with the reaction of someone seeing it for the first time. She looks at the security panel by the front door for two full seconds before she moves on.
She doesn’t ask about the security panel either.
When Kostya has finished, she thanks him in the tone she uses with him professionally, even and direct, and he nods and looks at me, and I tilt my head toward the study.
Kostya closes the study door behind the two of us and opens his folder.
“Since the council session,” he says, “Grigori has made contact with Lev Sorokin twice. Both meetings in person, both at locations with no cameras. He has also reached out to Vadim Chernov, who, as you know, sits on the eastern corridor oversight committee and has been uncommitted on the Marchetti question since September.”
I sit on the edge of the desk. “Chernov.”
“He had dinner with Grigori Thursday evening. Two hours. Private room at a restaurant in the West Village.” Kostya turns a page. “We do not have the conversation, but we have the duration, and we have the fact that Chernov called his financial adviser at nine the following morning, which he does not typically do on Fridays.”
I look at him. “Grigori is buying votes.”
“He’s laying the groundwork. He doesn’t have enough yet to move against you formally, but he’s building toward it, and he’s doing it quickly. The pace has accelerated since the meeting.”
Since I walked into that council room and told them the Volkov alliance was closed.
“Pull everything we have on Chernov,” I say. “Financial history, council voting record, any existing connections to Volkovinterests. I want to know what Grigori offered him before I decide how to respond.”
Kostya writes it down. “There is one more thing.” He doesn’t look up from his notes. “Grigori made a third contact this week. Not a council member.”
I wait.
“Marchetti,” he says.
The study is very quiet.
