Prologue
Moscow
14 years ago
“I don’t believe in second chances.” The knife was long, slender, double-edged. A knife made for stabbing. In and out between two ribs before the pain registered. It winked in the firelight when Andrei turned it over and ran the polishing cloth down its other side. “You will betray me only once, and then I’ll gut you.”
His gaze flicked upward, briefly, to gauge his reaction, and Toly nodded. “Yes, sir.” His voice came out a croak because he used it so seldom.
Andrei nodded in return, and resumed polishing the knife.
Anatoly was twelve-years-old, scrawnier than one of the half-starved dogs he’d just passed on the street outside, and his mother had died four days ago. He hadn’t cried, and didn’t expect that he would. Her last words to him had been a slurred, “Shut up and bring me that.” It turned out vodka on top of heroin on top of cocaine, in the quantities she’d consumed, was a fatal combination. Her heart had given out, the doctor had said – the man the bratva calleddoctor, with his small, girlish hands, and smaller eyes, always narrow behind the perfect circles of his wire-framed glasses. He’d come into the room tracking snow across the Aubusson, smelling of cigarette smoke and a woman’s strong perfume, shirt buttoned up tight against his throat to hide a tattoo that only ever peeked out when he stretched his neck. He’d hovered his ear over Mother’s foam-streaked lips, and then pressed it to her chest, where her dress plunged the lowest. Rested his fingertips on the pulse point in her wrist; lifted each eyelid to examine her reddened sclera.
“She’s dead,” he’d announced. “Her heart.” A meaningful glance toward the glass coffee table and its heaps of glasses, and dishes, and rolled up bills told the story ofwhyher heart had failed.
Toly hadn’t needed an explanation. He’d been expecting it to happen, really. Someday sooner rather than later. He’d even been preparing: squirreling money and canned food away into his rucksack, stealing her good leather gloves and sewing some of her less-loved furs into the lining of his coat, for warmth and for the chance to sell them, later, if the money ran out and he failed to pick the right pockets. He wouldn’t leave her, not until the end…but once he did, he was planning to disappear. He was small and quiet enough that no none would miss him.
But the maid had come in just after Mother passed, when her body was still warm and Toly was lacing his boots. She’d screamed. The water pitcher she carried shattered. Boots came running. The doctor was sent for.
Then Andrei. He’d stood over the body, expressionless save the faintest curling of his upper lip.
Then he’d turned to Toly, trying to stay half-hidden between two curtains. “You. Come.”
No chance for escape, then.
And now they’d arrived at this moment, in the man’s opulent study, fire crackling merrily beneath a heavy, dark mantel upon which Andrei had smacked a man’s forehead half-an-hour ago. Armed men stood inside the door, one on either side of it, and they’d passed others in the hallway. They had greeted Andrei with respectful ducks of their heads, and not acknowledged Toly at all.
Andrei acknowledged him, though, in the way he lifted the knife toward the light and squinted at its brightness, searching for any missed spots or smudges. “Your mother,” he began, “was a leech. She always wanted something from me: more dresses, more shoes, more furs. More trips, and more trinkets. More drugs, more booze, more caviar, more, more, more. She could have sucked me dry and it still wouldn’t have been enough. Nothing but take, take, take. A parasite.” His gaze cut over, a brown that was flat and cold, like rocks at the bottom of a lake.
Toly said, “Yes, sir.”
“And then the bitch dies, and leaves you behind.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Butyou…” He pointed at him with the knife, head cocked, gaze narrowed, calculating. “I don’t think you’re like your mother. I think you’re a smart boy, aren’t you?”
Toly couldn’t remember when he’d last had a sip of water, and it was difficult to swallow. He kept his hands still at his sides, though, and his face composed, and he didn’t shiver the way he wanted to. He’d learned how to be very still over the years; how to tighten all his muscles so that it almost looked as if he wasn’t breathing. “I think so, sir.”
Andrei Kozlov’s smiles were rare, hard-won things. They were terrible, too, as was the one that stretched his mouth now. “See? Smart.” He twisted in his chair so he addressed the man standing large and silent behind him, Misha. “He’s smart, this one, Misha. Don’t you think?”
“Yes, sir.”
The Pakhan turned back to Toly. Flipped the knife in one easy movement so that he was holding the blade he’d just polished, and extended the handle to Toly.
Toly knew better than to hesitate. If he flinched, or made a face, or held back in any way, that would show weakness. Would require a second chance – and Andrei didn’t believe in those. So he gripped the knife with a sure, dry hand, and held it in the way that Misha had shown him earlier.
Andrei asked, “Do you remember where to aim?”
“Yes, sir.” He turned from the fireplace, and the Pakhan sitting before it…toward the man who sat ten feet away, in the corner of the room, bound hand and foot to a chair that cost more than every stitch of ratty clothing he wore, crying in squelched little gulping sounds, face red around the gag shoved deep into his mouth.
Toly didn’t know the man’s name, nor his sins against the bratva. It wasn’t his business to know. This was a test, an initiation. And there was no room for error.
The man’s face, wet with tears and snot, was twisted and bruised, wretched to behold, and so Toly didn’t look at it. Looked instead at the man’s bird-boned chest, with its narrow shoulders, soft pectorals, and pot belly all visible in the once-white undershirt he’d been stripped to. Looked at his left collarbone, and let his gaze trail downward, searching for the right place.
The man’s whimpering grew frantic as Toly strode toward him across the rug. “Mmph-mmph-mmph!” Shrill and high even without words. He shook his head frantically, and tried to spit out the gag with a few wet gulping sounds, but to no avail.
Toly stepped between the man’s legs, and struck with the knife. Not as quickly as Misha had, when demonstrating, because it was his first time and he wanted to hit the heart on the first try.You must press hard, Misha had said, harder than you think. So he aimed carefully, and he pushed hard.
