“He came to the house,” she says suddenly.
I cock my head to the side. “What?”
“Before the massacre.” She closes her eyes. “Kolya. He came to the house. I remember now.”
I say nothing, not wanting to disturb the memory.
“I remember he and my dad argued,” she continues. She opens her eyes. Her voice and gaze are both distant, as if she’s following a thread that only she can see. “I was on the stairs. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I didn’t understand the words, but I remember the tone of Dad’s voice. He was angry—angry in a way I’d never seen. And he seemed afraid, which scared me because I’d never seen him like that either.”
“Do you remember what Kolya said?”
She shakes her head. “No, I don’t. But I remember the way I felt. I was cold and scared.” She turns her attention to me. “Green eyes. I remember his green eyes. I remember the way he looked at me as he left, like he knew I had been there the entire time, like he knew something I didn’t. I hated it. The second he’d put his eyes on me, I’d wanted them off.”
I reach out and cover her hand with mine. She doesn’t pull away.
“There’s one more,” I say quietly.
She turns to the last page. It’s another photograph, this one smaller and slightly blurred. It’s of a woman and two little girls—one of them Thea. They’re standing outside a brownstone somewhere in Brooklyn.
It’s Liza’s house the morning after.
I barely remember this day,” she says. “I remember the strangeness of the house, wondering where my family was. But everything else is a blur.”
I tighten my grip on her hand. The limo slows.
“Where are we?” she asks, craning her head to look out the window.
“The Apthorp, where the council is being held.”
The building emerges through the rain—an entire city block of Beaux-Arts architectural limestone on Broadway and West 79th, over a hundred years old. One of the most storied addresses in the city.
But most importantly, it’s private and discreet. The kind of place where powerful men have conducted dangerous conversations for over a century.
The Bratva has kept a private room on the second floor for decades.
The limo stops and the driver opens the door for us, holding a large umbrella. I exit, offering my hand to her. She takes it and climbs out beside me.
She looks extraordinary, powerful, even. Like a woman walking toward something she was always meant to face.
“Ready?” I ask.
She exhales sharply, then looks up at the building.
“No,” she admits, “I’m not. But I’m doing it anyway.”
I can’t help but smile at her response.
“Good.”
Then she turns to me, and something in her expression makes my chest ache.
“If this goes wrong—” she starts.
“It won’t.”
“But if it does?—”
I cut her off with a quick kiss, hard and certain, right there on the sidewalk, with the rain coming down and the city roaring around us.