Gatac

  Anne's arm had been going off for half a minute or so by the time it actually woke her up; as always, it was on the far end of the nightstand and so required she turn over and stretch her arm to hit its top. The bells stopped ringing and Anne's hand continued its journey to the nearby mp, clicking that on, which produced barely enough brightness to light the vicinity of the bed. Back to the arm clock, then, and their little morning ritual. First, Anne wound it tight and checked it against her watch — about a minute slow, should be reset one of those days. She put it down and id back into bed and stared up at the dark ceiling. For a change, she turned her head and stared at the bckout curtains. It was getting harder to remember the st time she'd been woken by sunshine.

  Well, she was awake and the warmth of the night had already fled from under the disturbed comforter. Best to get on with the day, then. She swung her legs out to the side and put her bare feet to the cold floor, keeping them there for a moment while she sat. She stood from the bed, only to take a step away, turn about and sink down to her knees like three counts of Viennese Waltz. Her cotton nightgown was just long enough to go between her knees and the ground, but that was beside the point. Anne closed her eyes and sighed. She brought her arms up and folded her hands.

  “I give praise to you, Lord,” she whispered, “for it is your mercy that sustains us all and lifts our souls to Heaven, saints and sinners alike, when we find the strength to give our heart to you. I hope you look kindly on me despite all. Yesterday, I…I killed again, Lord, three in the morning and two in the afternoon. I grievously injured a man and intimidated yet more. I know well I led myself to those sins by my pride. But there is still no courage in me, only the same fear as ever. I tell myself I require but a touch of your warmth as a remedy, yet what manner of child am I, to demand a sign and expose thereby my own faithlessness? I do not know if I can let go of those foul promises I made so long ago…you know how it pains me to go back on my word, more than it grieves me to wander this path of death. In this I remain wicked.”

  She sucked a fresh breath through her teeth.

  “I am grateful to see another dawn, Lord,” she continued. “If this is to be my sentence, then I thank you once more for the comfort in which I serve it. I thank you for my good health and fortune, for my steady hands and my clear eyes. I hope that one day I may use them to ends that please you. If you would hear me, Lord, I ask that you bestow your blessings on Detective Sean Collins. I ask that you grant soce to the souls of Arkady Arsenovich Ignatyev, Leonid Samuilovich Morozov and Szymon Samuilovich Morozov, may they rest in peace. And I ask that you bring comfort to the hearts of Alexander Arkadyevich Ignatyev and Viktor Andrejevic Raikov. Thank you, Lord.”

  He didn’t answer her. He never did.

  “Amen,” she added.

  When Sean came to from the sound of a meaty thump, it was coupled to a falling sensation that had him convinced for one panicky second he'd actually rolled out of bed. It wasn't true, but to be fair to Sean, he had no precise memory of how he had gotten into bed to begin with. He was still in yesterday's clothes, utterly sweated through (though spared the smell thanks to a stuffy nose) and desperately hoping that the things he felt encrusting his eyes, his nose and the corners of his mouth were three utterly unreted substances.

  The thump kept repeating, and after a minute or so of trying to ignore it, he realized it wasn't stopping. This invited, nay, demanded his personal intercession if he was going to get any fucking sleep tonight, so he told his headache to take a number and get in line as he struggled out of bed and shambled to where he imagined the door was. It was a close enough guess and so he found himself in the hallway outside, where it occurred to him that looking for a light switch might be a good idea. He felt for one to the side of the door to his room and quickly found the relevant piece of pstic, flipping the lever upwards and summoning 240 Watts of aggravation into his life. Using the back of his left sleeve, he did a cursory wipe of his eyes to get some of the gunk out, then walked over to Anne's door to investigate the source of the sound, trusting time and movement to kickstart his consciousness.

  Knock, knock, knock. He made each one hurt, to get her attention. “Anne?” he cried. “Is that you?”

  It was her, of course, because the thumping stopped momentarily to be repced by footsteps coming up on the door. She opened it and stood there, free hand leaning on the doorframe with a neutral expression on her face. Sean gnced down at a shiny bead of sweat running down the side of her throat until it was swallowed by the sweatsuit she was wearing. Some strands of straightened hair had escaped her hair wrap and still glistened with the remains of moisturizer.

  “Hello, Sean,” she said. ”It is good to see you up. It is almost six ten now.”“Okay,” Sean said. “Well, as long as it’s only almost six ten. Wouldn’t wanna oversleep for our meeting at actual ten.”“I am trying to uphold my routine as far as possible,” she said. “I am sorry for disturbing you. I do not usually have to consider other people nearby when I stay here.”“Save it,” Sean said. “I’m up.”Having established that neither of them knew how to say ‘Good morning’, Anne turned away from the door and walked back into her room. “Did you find what you were looking for in the files?” she asked.“…yeah?” Sean said. He had notes for this. Had made notes for this, didn't have them on him. Actually, that is to say, he was pretty sure he had made notes —“Good,” Anne said, then turned back toward him from where she stood in the middle of her room. “Are you going to keep standing there or do you want to work on your fitness?”Sean pinched the bridge of his nose. “Standing here sounds good,” he said. “Thanks for inviting me to your torture regimen, though. Another time, maybe.”“Would you please give me an eight-count, then?” Anne said, shaking her arms about and pointedly putting her feet together.“Okay,” Sean said. “Uh…whenever you're ready, Anne.”“I am ready,” Anne said.

  One — Anne squatted down until her hands touched the floor. Two — she kicked her legs out to the rear into a pnking position. Three — lowered herself to the floor. Four — pushing up. Five, down, six up again, seven hauled her feet back into the squat and on eight, she jumped up from the squat into the standing position.

  “Okay,” Sean said. “Should I just — ”“Keep counting,” Anne said.

  So Sean did keep counting for the next five minutes, all the while nursing his headache and trying to keep standing despite his exhaustion and internally swearing off caffeine forever, as if renouncing the devil would erase the wages of his sins. That was quite possibly the worst way of watching a fit young woman do sweaty exercise ever devised.

  “ — five six seven eight, one two three four five six seven eight, one two —”“Done!” Anne breathed, swinging her arms around in a bid to work out the kinks and prepare for stretching. “How many?”Sean somehow found the energy to look up at her. “Hey, you asked for an eight count, not a…count.”Anne nodded. “I suppose I did,” she said. “I should have liked to compare numbers, nevertheless.”Sean offered his apology by way of a muttered “Fuck.” He looked her over. “So, that’s how you start your days?”“It is not my routine,” Anne said. “But today I have neither the time nor means for a more substantial workout, so this will have to do.”“What’s ‘more substantial’ than this, you know, for the rest of us?” Sean asked.“Jump rope or a run, shadowboxing, bag work — nothing too fancy,” Anne said, then walked over to her closet to retrieve a towel and a pair of purple pstic shower shoes. “Time for a shower.” She gave Sean a once over, then tossed the gear his way and grabbed her spares.Sean looked at her, then not at her, then at the items scattered over the floor before him. “Shower sounds good,” he said.

  At the conference table downstairs, Sean's elbows rested on the same, and his head rested on his hands, while his hopes for ever waking up again rested in the cup of piping hot bck tea Mikhail was pouring him just that moment. Across the table, Alexander didn't look much better; even Viktor, ‘nice guy’ that he was, couldn't hide his tiredness. Sean wondered whether he’d come to help Alexander after all or if another concern had kept him awake. Arkady Ignatyev’s death should have given them all pause, but then again, it wasn’t his business to tell people how to grieve. Maybe it would hit them after they got to a pce where they could breathe easier. Then again, what was staying up all night to dig through files but an attempt to not have to dream? It all added up to a big fat unfair advantage for Anne, who was the st one to the table in a bck suit, a faint smell of — green? — and freshly ironed hair tied back into a bun.

  “Good morning,” she said, then noticed Sean and switched linguistic gears again. “How far did you get st night?” she asked Alexander.“One of the bags,” Alexander coughed, between sips of his own cup of tea; he made a face at the taste and quickly added a few spoons of jam. He took another sip and still made a face. The irritation seemed to be the only thing giving his face any color at all. “And you, Annie? Did you sleep well?”“I am as rested as circumstances allow,” Anne said.“Yeah, you smell rested,” Sean said. “I mean, kinda good. Good. What is that? Smells like a…forest.”“Hyacinth, pine and juniper,” Viktor said.“You can tell that from a sniff?” Sean asked.“I could,” Viktor said. “But it was easier to read the bel when I was buying it for her.”“Huh,” Sean said. He took a deep sip from his cup of tea, swished it around in his mouth, then swallowed it. After a few more seconds, he put his hands on the table and pushed himself up. “Excuse me,” he burped.

  The nearest toilet was just near enough.

  “Maybe I can just wait in the car,” Sean offered. That seemed to not to require too much effort, already sitting as he was in the passenger seat of Anne's Nissan again, though without the shotgun this time. His test appropriation of a Anne spare was a pair of sungsses to hide his bloodshot eyes from the streets rolling past them. “You know, get me if you need me, I'll just — try to catch up on some Zs.”“Not interested in sitting in on a meeting with a Dolzhikov?” Anne teased.“Interested, yes,” Sean said, “but it's a distinct second behind not dying.”“It is just a business breakfast,” Anne said.“Both of these words are scary right now,” Sean said. “You want to see me puke some caviar on Big Nick's shoes, is that it?”“I can't rightly say I do,” Anne said. “Does this happen every time you work through the night with your 'terror brew'?”“Didn't used to,” Sean said. “What about you? Early to bed and early to rise makes a girl criminal and and lets her dodge Vice?”Anne choked down a chuckle. “In truth,” she said, “few of God's gifts are quite as sweet as a good night's sleep. And I try to keep my vices job-reted. The occasional shot of vodka can’t be helped when it comes to business, but I have yet to acquire a taste for it.”“What's so fucking great about getting drunk anyway?” Sean asked.“I couldn’t tell you,” Anne said. “Listen, Sean, about this meeting…”“Yeah?” Sean said.“I need to know that you are not going to…do something,” she said.“Wasn't going to,” Sean said. “Shake hands, sit down, shut up, that's the pn.”“It is a good pn,” Anne said. “Oh, and keep your hands visible at all times. You don’t want anyone thinking you are reaching for a tape recorder.”“What about weapons, though?” Sean asked.“Assume everyone is armed,” Anne said.“Keeps things civilized, right?” Sean said.Anne nodded. “Civilized,” she said.

  The restaurant was in a slightly more decent area of New York City than the hotel. The street was already packed with parked cars, so Anne swung the Nissan to the left and into the side alley. At least nobody had blocked the lowered curb here, and so the only obstacle Anne had to maneuver around were the trash bags stacking up next to the restaurant's back door. This was the pce where she had seen the true face of the city for the first time, and part of it were the holes her bullets had left in the walls. Of course they had long since been filled in, sanded and repainted. With its wounds scabbed over, the city soldiered on, a resiliency that spoke to Anne. Her eyes went back to the tarmac after a moment of reflection. The alley terminated in what would have been called a dead end had it been on a proper road, and it was just big enough to pull the Nissan into a sharp left turn and come to a stop.

  She got out of the car easily enough, but Sean struggled to open his door wide enough to climb out without banging said door against a utility pole. He briefly considered compining, but he couldn't be too mad. After all, this wasn't actually a real parking spot, as should have been evident by the fact that it wasn't already occupied by a car. Once out of the car, he closed the door, feeling just a tinge of badness over the amount of force he had used when he heard the lock snap closed — one man's firm and sure was another's smming the door, but Anne had bigger issues on her mind than the wear on her Nissan’s door locks, and didn't raise a compint about Sean's treatment of the same. With her back to him, it was a good moment to take in her suit without meeting her gaze. In the light of day, it wasn't so much absolute bck as it was jet gray, a distinction Sean had snapped up at some point that made sense to him in this moment. The jacket was cut wide and straight with minimum padding, letting Anne's broad shoulders speak for themselves, while the pants walked a tightrope between looking baggy and being just loose enough to potentially kick somebody in the teeth. The eggshell-colored cuffs and colr of her shirt peeked out just enough to form a clear dividing line between the dark of the suit and the dark of her skin. Adding to the brutal overall look were the metal cufflinks on her sleeves, big and heavy and polished enough that Sean could almost hear a clinking sound when the light reflected off them.

  Frankly, it made Sean look like shit. He had dressed out of his bug-out bag, which meant brown scks with frayed cuffs, a white polo shirt with a navy blue colr and Oxfords where the cracked top leather had had its st nasty fight with the softening sole and was now filing for divorce. He wondered if it was too te to climb a nearby building, tear off a couple strips of tar paper and build an origami jacket for himself, just to make it look like he was at least trying, but the ten seconds between car and the restaurant's back door just weren't enough. And to top it all off, his shirt wasn't tucked in, because he had no holster and had slid his Beretta — no, the Beretta, not his Beretta — into the side of his waistband, where it jiggled with every step, and Sean just wasn't sure whether he was more afraid of it dropping through the sck leg onto the floor, every point of contact producing a room-quieting metallic ctter, or of it going off and putting a hole in his leg or his foot or just demolishing his family jewels in total. It all added up to a lot of anxieties that were easily readable on his face when they walked into the restaurant proper.

  There were tables, which would seem to be an obvious choice of furniture for a restaurant, but what Sean couldn't get over was the size of those tables. They were round and made to seat about ten people each, with a central post thick as a tree and a tabletop covered in a radial parquet pattern of several dozen pieces of wood, each no doubt chiseled out of a separate whole tree, with the bance in shavings then sadly pressed together for the less impressive wall paneling. But the architect of this eatery had gone farther still. Clearly worried that he hadn't quite gotten across how much he hated, hated, hated trees, he had then added a hardwood floor and a painted wood ceiling that, accounting for its size and the intricacy of its artwork, would have been the rightful centerpiece of any half-decent orthodox church. In desperation, Sean's eyes scanned the details of the main hall for any sign of pstic whatsoever, but even the damn light switches were wooden. Much like him, in fact, before Anne surreptitiously cpped him on the small of the back, and so they were off to the center table.

  The center table, then, tried to understate all this effort by being covered in a pin white tablecloth big enough to pitch a literal tent with. A rge selection of dark breads, pickled foods and various sweets was arrayed in the middle of it, making it just a little less formal than having everything on a side table to be served by waiters with waistcoats and white gloves. On one side of the table sat Alexander with Viktor to his right, taking up two of a set of four table settings, while Nikoi sat opposite Alexander fnked on both sides by young white men, both interchangeably clean-shaven, short-haired and obviously armed to their crooked teeth. Neither of them rated a formal table setting, much less a pte. Anne nodded to her boss, then walked around the table, Sean just a half-step behind her.

  “Good morning, Mr. Dolzhikov,” Anne said, extending her hand; he smiled and scooted back in his chair to turn to face her, but made no attempt to get up. Their eyes met, and Sean followed with some interest the short battle of wills between them before Nikoi took her hand and shook it, but not before breaking said eye contact in favor of looking at Sean. Sean took a good long moment to realize it was his turn next and stepped up.

  “Good morning, Mr. Dolzhikov,” Sean repeated by ear. Nikoi's hand was still extended because he hadn't withdrawn it after shaking Anne's hand, and now Sean was in real big trouble: was Nikoi actually offering the shake? Then to not take it would be impertinent, dismissive, an insult — but if he wasn't, then shaking his hand anyway was presumptuous, forward and therefore an insult of another kind. Nikoi must have seen that thought process pying out on Sean's face and spotted the cop's hand sitting by his belly, because Nikoi reached forward and grabbed Sean's hand to shake, though not without a painfully firm grip to go with that kind gesture. In any event, Sean wasn't dead and that was one to chalk up in the ‘win’ column, so he bowed his head, disengaged and followed Anne back around the table, where he was too te to pull out the chair for her like a gentleman would have, and so was the st to sit down. As he did so, he noticed he had a pte and a fork and a knife and spoons upon spoons, while Anne’s pce was a bnk canvas of tablecloth.

  Alexander was still looking at Sean to make sure he was seated correctly when Nikoi reached toward the middle of the table, unscrewed a bottle of vodka and started pouring shots. Alexander got the first gss, Nikoi the second and then the help, well, somebody else could handle them — one of his men did so, in fact, pouring gsses for Viktor, Anne and Sean as Nikoi cleared his throat.

  “My thanks to you, Alexander Arkadyevich, for your kind invitation,” Nikoi said. “Though the occasion is a sad one, I hope this meeting will push us past the current unpleasantness.” He grasped his shotgss between his thumb and index finger, then raised his arm. “To a new future!” The other side of the table followed that gesture, Sean's gss barely filled before he had to thrust it ceiling-ward.“To a new future!” Alexander, Viktor and Anne repeated, while Sean mimed and mumbled along best as he could before it came time to drink. The vodka tasted as clear as it looked and went down smoothly enough; this, Sean thought he understood, set apart a quality product from the by- and aftertastes of cheaper swill. Still, starting the day off with a shot of grain alcohol on an empty stomach (and dear Lord had Sean made sure it was empty!) was not the most auspicious start, and Sean's eyes locked on to the saltiest pickled foods on offer in the hopes of counteracting the imbance in his humors.

  “Now, to the business at hand,” Nikoi continued, eyes focused on Alexander while the corners of his mouth lowered. “Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate Ilya Gavriilovic. I only managed to find one of his men, who told me your bck woman and the cop already visited him at Ilya’s pce of business. He told me you now have Ilya's files. The purpose of this theft interests me.”“Simmons and Detective Collins were conducting their own investigation,” Alexander said. “I approved it before I could speak to you. Considering the violent attacks on us, I'm sure you'll agree we reacted with great restraint.”“Yes, those attacks will not recur,” Nikoi said. “I have at least managed to spread the message to Ilya's men that no further action is to be taken; they are now all accounted for and in a safe pce. Sadly, those who knew of Ilya's pns were all killed in the attacks.”“Even Kyrill?” Alexander said. “Did you speak with Dolr?”“Yes, I spoke to the bck doctor,” Nikoi said, then turned his eyes toward Anne and continued in English. “I want you to know and understand. The man you attacked and hurt is dead.”“Last I saw him, he was still alive,” Anne said. “If I wanted him dead —”“What you wanted is nothing,” Nikoi said. “You involved your master in this by protecting the policeman.”

  Anne's eyes narrowed, but she swallowed her reply.

  “It is not appropriate in English to call me her master,” Alexander threw in. “Please mind your nguage.”“It is not appropriate for your bck henchwoman to sit at this table,” Nikoi shot back.“This is my house and I will decide what is appropriate here,” Alexander said, folding his hands on the table in front of him and raising his shoulders in an effort to puff up.“This was your father's house, it is not yet yours,” Nikoi said. “I followed your wish to involve you in the process as a courtesy. We are here to bury this war together with your father, young Alexander. I advise you not to speak with an authority you do not have, son of a Thief. Go to prison and earn your marks. Then you can command me. But right now, do not forget you are nobody before the Law.”“Perhaps I should speak up, then,” Viktor said. “I am a Thief in Law, and Arkady Arsenovich's right hand.”“You were also his bull,” Nikoi said.“I was,” Viktor said.“What's going on?” Sean whispered to Anne.“You did not do a very good job, I am sad to say,” Nikoi said, before looking to Alexander again. “Your father trusted a homosexual and a bck-assed girl. You should learn from his mistakes, young Alexander.”

  Alexander loudly cleared his throat, making Sean flinch away. Worrying about whether he would offend Nikoi was starting to look like a very quaint idea.

  “This ends now,” Alexander said. “You may be a Captain, Nikoi, but you are my guest today and far from home. All your ink does not give you the right to insult my lieutenants to my face. Now you can either do what you promised and work with me to end the violence, or leave through the door behind you.”“You are threatening me, young Alexander,” Nikoi said. Sean could see his bodyguards tense up.“No,” Alexander replied. “I'm crifying our prior agreement. That seems to be necessary.”

  Nikoi stared at Alexander for a few more moments, then leaned back in his chair, and for once he wasn't smiling about it; his bodyguards leaned back, too.

  “Very well,” Nikoi said. “I promised to mediate and I will limit my actions here accordingly. My apologies for overstepping. So, as there are no men alive who can help me reach out to Ilya, the only source of information are the files you stole from his office. I will need to take them in escrow and examine them for clues myself.”“You may have them,” Alexander said. “In the interest of resolving this situation quickly and amicably.”“I expect them delivered without dey,” Nikoi said. He looked to Viktor. “Your efficient completion of this task will show me that your ink is worth something.”“Please handle the transport of the files, Viktor,” Alexander said. “We must help the interim chairman Nikoi Dolzhikov however we can, after all.”“Naturally,” Viktor said.“A good decision, Alexander,” Nikoi said, rising up from the table and shooting a gnce at Anne. “And I suggest you make a few more good decisions before my granduncle returns. He will not approve of how you are conducting your family's affairs, acting like you are above our rules.”“Are you threatening me, Nikoi?” Alexander asked.“No,” Nikoi echoed. “I am crifying the Law. That also seems to be necessary. And now I think this meeting has run its course. A good day to you, Alexander.”

  It was all Alexander could do to say nothing and keep sitting while Nikoi and his two men walked out of the restaurant.

  Alexander stared down at the table. The food hadn't even been touched, except for the vodka bottle over at Nikoi's pce, with the cap — he couldn't even see where the cap had gone. Viktor must have sensed his ‘nephew’ tense up, because he quickly put a hand on his shoulder and pulled Alexander closer.

  “He's not worth your anger,” Viktor whispered to him.“I couldn't just sit here and let him insult you!” Alexander fumed.“I have only pity for a man whose own sex life is an insult to him,” Viktor said.“Uh,” Sean said. “What just happened?”

  Viktor reached down toward his belt and pulled up his shirt. Half-hidden behind the beltline of his scks were two tattoos of eyes sitting on either side of his belly, such that it was easy to imagine which part of his body was meant to stand in for the nose. Viktor made very sure Sean got a good look, leaving Anne to sigh. Before Alexander could turn to address her, she was already in the process of expining the conversation to Sean, which frankly didn't need all that many words.

  “Well,” Sean said in summation. “I was expecting the racism and sexism and gay bashing, but it sounds like he’s a jerk, too.” That notion went around the table until it had collected a nod from everyone in attendance. “Didn't you say this guy was your friend?” he asked Alexander, immediately gambling the conversational credit he had gained from his previous remark.“That's what I thought,” Alexander said. “Viktor is right. Getting angry won't help. We'll have to py along.”“We could all go with Viktor and drop the files off at Mr. Dolzhikov’s pce right now,” Anne suggested. “Tt would afford us a look at the state of things there.”“Yeah, weren't you gonna ask Big Nick to let us make a call to Grandpa at whatever swank Florida resort he's at, ogling dies and treating his bad lungs with a few medicinal Mai Tais?” Sean asked. “How long are we gonna keep not calling bullshit on that?”“What are you suggesting, Detective?” Alexander said.“I'm suggesting we grab the biggest guns we have and go push some faces into floorboards until we know what’s behind that little fairytale,” Sean said.“I appreciate your confidence in our skills,” Viktor said, “but we cannot win such a fight.”“Sorry,” Sean said. “Cop thinking. But yeah, just for starters, it's pretty fucking convenient for him he's reted to the old man, but we didn't know shit about him before we met him. I sure didn’t! Are we even sure he is who he says he is?”“ …yes,” Alexander said.“You don't sound sure,” Sean said.“It does not sit well with me, either,” Anne said. “I have not known Mr. Dolzhikov to speak of anyone he left behind in the mothernd and to be frank, there have been occasions where it ought to have come up. I am not disciming the possibility, but we are hanging an awful lot of trust on the word of someone you only met a few weeks ago.”“Wait a minute,” Sean said. “Oh, fuck me.”“…Sean?” Anne asked.“He’s Boris's son,” Sean said. “Tell me I’m wrong. He’s too old to be two generations removed, I mean a guy in his sixties having a grandnephew in his thirties…then again I heard they marry young in Europe — ”“A Thief has no family,” Viktor said. “That is the Law. You must understand this.”“Oh, I understand plenty,” Sean said, turning to Alexander. “If having a family is such a horrible viotion of the Law, how come you were ever born, Alexander? Or is it just marriage that’s a problem and fucking around is a-okay? See, if it works that way, Thieves’ Law almost makes sense.”“You are speaking out of turn, Sean,” Anne said.“Nobody in this room speaks out of turn, Anne,” Alexander added. “But leave my father out of it, Detective.”“…yeah, that was below the belt, sorry,” Sean said. "Alexander, look…I appreciate you didn’t want to make things difficult for someone you thought was your friend. But you’re keeping this supposedly awful secret just to protect Boris from this part of Thieves' Law, the same exact viotion your father clearly got away with. And I don’t get it. Why is this such a big deal? Why would Nikoi lie about it?”“My father did not 'get away' with anything,” Alexander said. “Look at us, Detective. Is this the core of a strong criminal organization? My father made some choices against the Law but raising a son was the worst of them all. He survived only because he was useful and discreet. And outside of council business he almost never left the house. He was scared to death of provoking anyone.”“…okay,” Sean said. “Okay. That makes a little more sense.”“It cost him dearly,” Alexander continued. “While the other Thieves carved up Brooklyn, we lived in exile off their table scraps and kept our heads down.”“Huh,” Sean said. “Still, expensive table scraps, right? I mean, the mansion alone — ”“To get us back on point,” Anne said. “What are we going to do about Nikoi Dolzhikov, boss? He is starting to look more and more like a problem we do need to deal with.”“All the same, we need him as a friend, Anne,” Alexander said. “There’s no way the council will choose us over him, if they have to choose. Let’s just…let’s py along for now. At least until the council decides what to do with Ilya and with us. Maybe they'll be sympathetic.”“Maybe,” Anne said. “But if they are not, we shall have to decide between our allegiance and our lives. Loathe as I am to suggest going to war…” She paused, waiting to be interrupted. “…but it may prove necessary.”“The Law does not exist as we like it, Anne,” Viktor said. “Remember what we sacrificed for it.”“Would you sacrifice yet more?” Anne countered. “We are far past inconvenience and injury both. My allegiance is as firm as I can make it but my death belongs to nobody but myself. No matter what Nikoi or the council or the Law might say.”“…I cannot agree with you,” Viktor said. “But I cannot condemn you, either. This decision falls to Alexander.”

  Alexander didn't look up.

  “However this pys out, I think you and Detective Collins should stay away from Nikoi for now,” he said. “Viktor, the files…”Viktor nodded and rose from his chair, taking care to properly tuck his shirt back into the waistband. “I will take care of it,” he said. “I hope that, one on one, he is more reasonable.”“Anne?” Sean said, turning to look at her.“If you think our presence would be a provocation, we will stay out of Nikoi’s way,” Anne said.“Good,” Alexander said. “Okay. Now, I don’t know about you but I’m not letting all this food go to waste.”“I could eat,” Sean weighed in.“…yes,” Anne agreed.“Enjoy it without me,” Viktor said. “I will go handle the files business.”“Why don't you take something with you for the road?” Alexander asked.“Not today,” Viktor said, already walking toward the exit. “I am on the diet.”