Her expression softens, just a little. “Then what is it?”
A mistake. A weakness. The first unnecessary risk I have taken in years.
“Get dressed,” I say.
She just smiles at me.
It makes me want to put her back on the bed and cancel the entire night. Instead, I leave the room before my discipline fails completely.
By evening, she’s dressed in black.
The dress is simpler than the green one, long-sleeved and close to her body, with a coat over it and her hair pinned back loosely at the nape of her neck. She looks elegant enough to pass through any door in Moscow and soft enough to make men underestimate her.
Both are dangerous.
Elena sees her in the foyer and goes very still.
For once, I enjoy the woman’s disapproval.
“She’s coming?” Elena asks in Russian.
“Yes.”
“That’s unwise.”
“I know.”
Katerina looks between us. “I assume that was about me.”
“Yes,” I say.
“What did she say?”
“That you look beautiful.”
Elena’s mouth tightens.
Katerina glances at her and smiles sweetly. “I somehow doubt that.”
Smart girl.
The drive takes us through a different Moscow than the one I showed her earlier. No bright tourist square now. No pastries in the snow. The city outside the glass is darker, slick with melted ice and headlights, the buildings heavier under night.
Katerina is quieter this time. Her hand rests near mine on the seat.
Not touching.
I leave it that way for five minutes before I take it. She looks down at our joined hands. Then out the window.
She does not pull away.
The club sits behind an unmarked black door on a narrow street where the cars are too expensive and the men outside too still. There is no sign. Only a small brass number beside the entrance and two bouncers in dark coats who straighten before I reach them.
Katerina steps out of the car and looks up at the building.
Music pulses faintly from somewhere below street level.
A line of well-dressed people waits near the corner, pretending not to watch us walk straight to the door.