Page 1 of Night of Shadows
Chapter 1
Lex
The Job
The basement of Elysium smells like leather, espresso, and something older. The kind of stillness that settles into a room where men have made hard decisions for a long time.
And I’m the only person here.
Nico is upstairs with the Romanos, finishing a meeting that should’ve been done forty minutes ago. I’ve been sitting in his office reading a federal docket because Nico texted me an hour ago and said to wait. So, I’m waiting. The docket’s open on his desk. The whiskey on the side table is mine, untouched. I’ve stopped drinking before noon. It’s been a year. Most days I do not miss it.
But today is one of the days I miss it.
The door opens. Nico walks in. He’s wearing the suit Mama bought him for Easter. He’s not been to Easter dinner in a while.
"Lex."
"How were the Romanos?"
"They were Romanos." He sets a folder on the desk between us. Heavy and federal. "I have a job for you."
I don’t pick up the folder. I read his face instead. Nico's face doesn’t give away much, but I’ve been reading it for thirty-five years. I can see what he’s preparing to ask me before he asks it.
"You want me to babysit."
"I want you to protect a federal witness until they testify before the grand jury. Then we re-evaluate."
"Send Petrov."
"Petrov runs the operation. I need you on the principal."
"Why?"
Nico sits down across from me and doesn’t answer right away. That’s also a tell. The Romanos meeting didn’t run forty minutes long. Nico ran the Romanos meeting forty minutes long because he didn’t want to walk into this room until he had the words he wanted to use on me.
"Because the contract is from Nikolai."
The whiskey on the side table is suddenly more interesting.
"Nikolai Reznikov," he says, in case I’ve forgotten the name. I have not forgotten the name. "Viktor's cousin. The old man's blood, working on the East Coast. He’s put a hundred thousand on the witness's head, and he wants it to feel personal. He told the contractor to do it slowly. To do it where her people can see it."
"Her people."
"She’s Irish American. South End. Her people are not Cormac's people, but they’re people Cormac respects. He called me this morning. He asked me, as a personal favor, to put my best man on her detail."
"Cormac has men."
"Cormac asked for you."
I look at the folder. The folder has a name. The name on the folder is one I knew before Nico walked into this room. I knew the way a man knows the name of a song he’s not heard in three years but hasn’t been able to forget.
Maeve Callahan.
My body stills. My mouth stays shut. The folder stays where it is. I do this so well that Nico doesn’t see me do it, which is to say I do it badly, because Nico is the only person who has ever seen me do anything.
He says, "What?"
"Nothing."
