Page 36 of Ruthless Sin
I do not look at Nico or at the Akhmatova. I look at the road.
By Magazine Street my knees have angled toward him a quarter inch.
I do not move them back.
A few nights ago he had his hand on the door of my room from the outside and he did not open it.
I knew he was there.
He knew I knew.
I have the folded paper in my pocket, the empty cup at my feet, the word gone from my mouth.
I lean my head a fraction toward the window.
You don’t get to feel safe. Not with a man.
He doesn’t look at me once on the drive home, his breathing slow and even, and my hand hasn’t gone to my knife once since we left the curb.
With a man in the seat beside me, I let my eyes close.
8
NICO
Marco is in the back room when I come down the back stairs.
He has not slept. Fresh ink on his knuckles. A second shirt already on his chair. Izzy is at her laptop, the mug at her elbow refilled four times.
She turns it toward me before I ask.
“Houston,” she says.
I look.
The third man. The one I asked her to bring me before Friday. Today is Thursday.
Airport footage. Houston international, the terminal exit. Walking through with a duffel and a phone he is going to throw out in the parking lot. The face that has not been on any Bratva payroll in years.
Lebedev asked questions at the port. This one doesn’t ask.
“Yuri Sokolov,” Izzy says. “Velikov network’s wet-work specialist. He retired in 2014. He has not been on a flight manifest in three and a half years. Today he flew Moscow to Frankfurt to Houston on a Canadian passport that was printed in March.”
“He’s not here to ask.”
“He’s here to take.”
Marco looks up from his comms board for the first time since I walked in. “Dante’s been told.”
“Casa Lucia.”
“Closed for the day,” Marco says. “Cassia made the call ninety minutes ago. The therapist who runs Tuesday group is at the satellite property in Algiers. The clinic is running on skeleton perimeter only.”
“Then why is Mila on the drive sheet.”
“She isn’t,” Marco says. “Cassia handled it. Maria walks her down. You drive her to the Algiers property. Forty minutes there, the group, forty minutes back. Sofia in the back. Same route until Magazine Street, new route from there. Two cars.”
“You ran this past Dante.”
