The Pakhan's Son Signs Too

You don't go in.

Every instinct you have says run, and you're halfway turned toward the stairwell when a man steps out of your kitchen into the hall light and sees you.

He's big, shaved head, a leather jacket. He has your laptop under one arm.

"Hey," he says, almost friendly. "Come here a second."

You run the wrong way.

Not to the stairs. He's closer to the stairs. You bolt past your own open door and into the bathroom at the end of your short hallway, because it's the only door in your apartment with a real lock, because your father installed it himself when you moved in and said every woman needs one door nobody opens but her, Ava. You slam it. You throw the bolt. You put your back against it and slide down to the tile.

Two voices now, outside. A second man. Russian, then English.

"Just open the door, sweetheart. We're not going to hurt you. We just want your dad's books."

The knob rattles. The bolt holds.

Your hands are shaking so hard you drop your own phone. It skitters under the sink. The other phone, the black one, is still in your coat pocket. You tear the plastic off with your teeth.

One contact. No name. Just a letter: M.

It rings once.

"Where are you." Not a question.

"My bathroom." You're whispering. You don't know why. "There are two men in my apartment. They want the books."

"Is the door locked?"

"Yes."

"Stay behind it. Don't open it for anyone but me. I'm four minutes away." A pause, and something in his voice shifts, gets quieter and more careful. "Ms. Wickstrom. Breathe. You're doing everything right."

He hangs up.

The knob rattles again. Then a heavy thump against the door, a shoulder, and the frame groans. You press your feet against the vanity and your back against the wood and count. You count the way your father taught you to count when you were small and the thunder was too loud. One Mississippi. Two.

At two hundred and eleven, you hear the front door of your apartment bang open.

Then it gets very fast, and very loud, and then very quiet.

A grunt. Something heavy hitting the floor. Your kitchen table skidding. A man's voice saying wait, wait, Misha, wait, and then a sound you will not think about later, a short wet crack and a howl. Furniture. A body against a wall. Then nothing but someone breathing hard and someone else whimpering.

And a voice, low and level, speaking Russian. You don't understand a word. You understand the tone perfectly. It's the voice of a man explaining exactly how the next thirty years of someone's life are going to go.

Footsteps. The front door. The whimpering moves away down the hall and is gone.

A knock on your bathroom door. Two soft raps.

"It's me," Mikhail says. "They're gone. Timo is walking them to their car."

You don't move.

"Take your time," he says. "I'll be here."

It's the I'll be here that does it. You stand on legs that don't feel like yours, and slide the bolt back, and open the door.

He's standing in your narrow hallway in his dark suit, his tie gone, his hair fallen across his forehead. His knuckles are split. There's a smear of someone else's blood on his cuff. Behind him your apartment looks like a storm went through it: cushions slashed, drawers on the floor, your mother's old cookbooks splayed open like shot birds.

He doesn't come toward you. He stays exactly where he is, his hands at his sides where you can see them.

"Are you hurt?"

"No." Your voice cracks. "No. I'm fine."

"You're shaking," he says. "May I?"

It takes you a second to understand he's asking to touch you. He's asking. In your wrecked apartment with blood on his cuff, he's waiting for your permission.

You nod.

He shrugs off his suit jacket and puts it around your shoulders. That's all. It's warm from his body and smells of cedar and rain and something sharp, like gun oil or winter. He tugs the lapels closed under your chin, and his fingers don't touch your skin.

"Timo followed you home," he says. "I told him to the moment you left the club. He saw them come out of a car and called me. I'm sorry I was slower than they were."

"You were four minutes."

"I was three minutes and fifty seconds too slow." He says it flatly, as if it's simply a figure in a column that doesn't balance. "They were Taras's. He'll get them back with a message."

"What message?"

He considers you for a moment. "That you're not available."

Then he goes to your kitchen counter, the only clear surface left, and holds out his hand. "The contract. You have your copy in your bag."

You stare at him. "How do you know that?"

"Because you're the kind of woman who brings two copies to a proposal."

You do. Of course you do. You take the folder out of your tote and lay it on the counter. He uncaps the fountain pen, flips to the last page and signs his name, Mikhail Platonovich Zakharin, in the same sharp upright hand as the margin. Then he initials clause four, beside He will ask.

He holds out the pen to you.

"I've already signed," you say. "Last night. On my side."

"I know," he says. "I read it. I'm signing too."

You look at the two signatures side by side, yours careful, his like a blade. The Pakhan's son signs too, you think, a little hysterically, and you have to press your lips together so you don't laugh.

"Pack a bag," Mikhail says.

"That isn't a yes."

"Yes," he says. "That's a yes. Now pack a bag, Ava."

The penthouse is on the forty-first floor of a limestone tower on East Lake Shore Drive, and from the living room windows the lake is a black field to the end of the world.

You barely see it. You're too tired. He walks you down a long hall to a door at the end, opens it on a bedroom bigger than your entire apartment, all pale wood and white linen, and holds out a key on a plain steel ring.

"This locks from the inside," he says. "This is the only key. There's no spare. Timo doesn't have one. I don't have one."

You take it. It's warm from his pocket.

"My room is on the other side of that wall," he says. "If you need anything, you text me. If you want to be left alone, you don't."

"Mikhail."

He stops in the doorway. It's the first time you've said his first name. You watch it land on him.

"Thank you," you say.

He looks at you for a long moment, the hall light behind him so you can't quite read his face.

"Lock the door, Ms. Wickstrom," he says, and goes.

You lock it. You sit on the enormous bed in his jacket and look at your father's raincoat over a chair and the lake beyond the glass, and you think, I married the bratva tonight, or I'm going to tomorrow, and the thought is so absurd you finally do laugh, alone, into your hands.

At 1:12 a.m., the black phone lights up on the nightstand.

M: Clause four says I ask. So I'm asking.