Grace nodded. “Got it.”
“And get the girls to talk to their friends, the ones who
don’t work here. They have chat rooms and forums and
shit where they talk about clients. Get the word out. Let
them know this guy is dangerous. And let them know I
want him found. Twenty-five thousand dollars to the
first person who gives us a name.”
Grace nodded gratefully. “Thanks, Angelo.”
“I want to be the one to do him,” said Rico quietly. His
face was like thunder. I couldn’t remember ever seeing
him so upset. “When we get a name, I’ll take care of it.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “When we get a name,” I
told him, “you and me will do the bastard together.”
22
Irina
I pounded up the stairs and burst out onto the roof of
Fenbrook Academy, my ballet slippers sliding
precariously in the snow. The freezing wind whipped
around me, but I welcomed it. The cold was calming,
the icy air letting me breathe properly for the first time
in hours.
I’d run up here the second my lesson ended, unable to
take the mirrored room anymore. Every time I saw my
reflection, I thought: traitor!
It had been two days since I’d seen Angelo. Two days
of going quietly nuts, trying to figure out if I was doing
the right thing. My decision to help him had changed
everything. Now, instead of shying away from Vasiliy
and trying to block out his conversations about crime, I
listened carefully. That made Vasiliy happy, because he
thought I was finally taking an interest in the family
business. And that in turn made me feel even worse
about betraying him.
It wasn’t the worst part, though. The worst part was
Mikhail. If I was to have a hope of stopping the war, I
needed to be close to him—both to learn his secrets so
that I could warn Angelo of danger and to try to
convince him to change course. But that meant I
couldn’t keep pushing him away.
To save the man I was really starting to care about, I
had to get friendly with the man I detested.
I’d started to smile at him, and to force myself not to
pull away quite so quickly when his hands wandered. It
seemed to be working but I wasn’t sure how long I
could keep it up. The thought of having lunch with him
today was what had tipped me over the edge into panic
and sent me running up to the roof. I knew that, as
soon as he saw me smiling at Mikhail, Vasiliy would grin
dotingly at us and comment on how well we were
getting along, while I tried not to throw up. To protect
Angelo, I was drifting dangerously close to the forced
marriage I’d been trying so hard to run from.
So far, I hadn’t learned much of value and all my
attempts to try to talk peace with either of them had
been ignored. The Italians will never talk peace, they
kept saying. We cannot show weakness. And throughout
it all, I had no clue whether I was doing the right thing.
What’s right when everyone’s a criminal? Is it okay to
betray your family for the right reasons or is blood
sacred, as Vasiliy had always taught me? I couldn’t
sleep, could barely eat. There was no one I could talk
to, no one who would understand—
Except….
I pulled out my phone and stared at a name in my
contacts list. I stood there for almost a minute before I
finally dialed.
“Hello?” said Arianna.
Arianna is an American who used to work for the CIA.
She was sent by them to seduce Luka and learn his
secrets. Instead, she fell for him and turned on her
masters. She and Luka are inseparable, now, and she’s
even become close to Vasiliy. I figured that, if anyone
could understand what I was going through, it was her.
“Irina?” She could tell from my silence that something
was wrong. “Is everything okay?”
“I need to talk to you,” I said slowly. “But this is
something you can’t tell anyone about. Not even Luka.”
Now she went quiet. After all the lies she’d told Luka
when she was CIA, the two of them had had to learn to
trust each other. The last thing she needed was to start
keeping secrets again. I knew I was putting her in an
awful position and I felt shitty about it. But if I didn’t
talk to someone, I was going to lose it completely.
“Okay,” she said at last. “Go.”
I took a deep breath and told her everything. I told her
about meeting Angelo and then finding out who he was.
I told her about how the two sides were spinning
towards war and my efforts to stop it. I told her about
the lies I’d already told and the lies I’d have to tell.
When I’d finished, she let out a long breath. “Jesus,
Irina….”
I was almost in tears. “Well?” I demanded. “What do I
do? What should I have done? Am I....evil?”
She was silent for a long time. Then she said, “You
haven’t told me everything.”
“I have! That’s everything!” I’d glossed over the details
of the filthy phone call, but otherwise—
“You haven’t told me how you feel about him.”
That stopped me cold. And suddenly, I was struggling to
get the words out. I’d had no problem admitting my sins
but as soon as it came to my feelings...as a Malakov, I’d
spent years keeping those trapped beneath the ice.
Sometimes, I didn’t even admit them to myself.
“He makes me feel…” I started. And suddenly, as I
gingerly opened a path through the ice, it all came
flooding out. “He makes me feel like no one else does,”
I said. “I know he’s not a good man, I know he’s a
gangster but...he tries to do right. He protects people.
He has honor. He touches me and I melt. I look at him
and I feel this pull…. It hurts when I’m not near him.
And when he looks at me, it’s like there’s no other
women in the world.”
“That’s how I felt about Luka,” Arianna whispered. “I
still do.”
“So you think I’m doing the right thing?”
When she didn’t answer straight away, I felt sick. I tried
to imagine what it must have been like for her:
thousands of miles from home, in a strange city,
surrounded by people who’d kill her if they found out
who she really was. She’d had every reason to change
sides. “I guess at least it wasn’t your family you were
betraying,” I said bitterly.
“It kind of was,” Arianna said. “The CIA was my family,
or as close as I had left.” She sighed. “Look...are you
doing the right thing? I honestly have no idea. I know
how Vasiliy feels about loyalty. Luka, too. If they find
out about this, it’ll destroy them.”
I closed my eyes, feeling them growing hot.
“But you’re trying to stop a gang war that’s going to get
people killed...and I think you’re right, Angelo probably
has more in common with Vasiliy than either of them
will admit. If I was in your shoes...I’d probably do the
same. That’s the best I can give you.”
It wasn’t much, but it helped. “Thanks, Arianna.”
“Doesn’t feel like I’ve helped much. What are you going
to do?”
I thought of Mikhail and my flesh crawled as I imagined
cozying up to him. But if it helped to protect Angelo….
“What I have to,” I said firmly.
“Irina...even if you and he pull this off and there’s some
sort of peace between the Italians and the
Russians...Vasiliy isn’t going to let you run off with their
leader. If you want a future with Angelo, you might