Page 108 of Cruel Demands

Arkady places something else on the table. A metal case. The tattooed man opens it.

Inside are clear plastic packets filled with white powder, packed tightly between boxes marked with medical labels. For a moment, my mind refuses to identify what I’m seeing. Flour? Chemicals? Anything else. Arkady pulls one of the medical boxes aside, revealing more packets underneath. My body goes even colder beneath my coat.

Drugs. Real drugs. Not a transport company with strange paperwork. Not a wealthy businessman with a dead cousin. Not security measures I could explain away because Mikhail is governor. Cocaine.

Mikhail stands ten feet away from enough of it to put everyone in this building in prison. My fingers press against the brick wall. I think of his house. His cars. The guards. The way men twice his age wait for permission to sit down. The way he gives orders.

Inside, one of the restrained men says something. Mikhail turns toward him.

Even through the glass, the energy of the room changes. Everyone looks at Mikhail. The man in the chair shakes his head. Mikhail says something again. I can’t hear all of it.

Then one word carries clearly enough through the glass. “…Orlov…”

My stomach drops like I’m on the highest point of a roller coaster. The man shakes his head harder. Mikhail steps closer, and I strain to hear.

“…Lyubertsy…”

Another sentence disappears beneath the hum of something mechanical inside the building. Then: “…phone…”

The page flashes through my mind.

LYUBERTSY — CLEARED.

O.T. — TRANSFERRED.

SIX — PENDING.

I grip the edge of the window. Whatever I found in that folder, whatever Mikhail tried to scare me away from, this is it.

The man in the chair says something quickly, and Mikhail listens, but his expression doesn’t change. He asks another question, and the man shakes his head. Mikhail presses an index finger to his lips, shushing him. The gesture is almost gentle. That makes it worse.

He asks again. The man refuses. Mikhail hits him. The punch lands clean against his face, and I flinch as the man’s head snaps sideways. Blood appears immediately at the corner of his mouth. The chair scrapes backward against the concrete. No one inside reacts.

Mikhail doesn’t look angry. He steps in front of the man again and says something I can’t hear. The man spits blood onto the floor. Mikhail waits. Another question. Another refusal. The second punch hits the other side of his face, and my hand flies to my mouth. The man groans through clenched teeth and folds forward as far as the restraints allow.

Mikhail reaches down and takes his jaw in one hand, forcing his face back up. He speaks quietly. I can’t hear the words. I don’t need to. The man begins talking. Fast. Mikhail releases him. Arkady says something, and one of the other men picks up a phone from the table.

Mikhail watches impassively. He doesn’t look angry or pleased. He doesn’t look away. Mikhail watches with the calm attention he gives reports in meetings. Five days ago, he sat beside me on the floor and ate Fritos while pretending he hated them. He kissed me gently enough that I could still feel it when I went to bed.

I need to go, but I’m frozen to the spot. Fear has rooted me to this place like I’m part of the scenery itself. I could grow old here and die here if I don’t move right now, and yet my mind is screaming and my body won’t listen. Inside, Mikhail turns toward another one of the six men. Arkady places a phone in front of him. The man’s face goes pale. Mikhail says something. The man begins talking immediately. Smart man.

My legs feel detached from me. My pulse pounds in my throat. The road where I left the taxi is less than fifty yards away. I could get there. I could call another one. I could go back to my apartment and pretend I never saw this ugliness. I could listen to Petyr, keep my head down, pretend that all is well, go back to who I was before I ever accepted a drink from Mikhail Korolev. Before he kissed me. Before I started wondering whether he might actually care about me.

I suck in air, finally feeling sensation return to my body, and just as my eyes slide away from the horrible sight, the weight and heat of a man’s hand is clamped over my mouth.

25

MIKHAIL

The man on the floor stops moving. He’s not dead, just broken in spirit, having learned that nothing ends a beating that people are truly enjoying giving you, but he will be soon. Usually I would leave first. Pakhans do not usually do the killing, nor do they watch men die. They don’t get their hands dirty this way.

But this man photographed my mother. He watched her walk through the city, recorded where she went and when she went there, and turned the photographs over to my enemy. Worse, he frightened me with them. He made me look at my mother through another man’s eyes and understand that someone had been close enough to hurt her.

I nod at my men, the cases close, and the photographer is dragged to his feet. I walk up close to him so I can look into his swollen eyes, his crushed nose against my strong nose, and I tell him, “I know you want to take it back. I know you are sorry for threatening my mother. You did not know you were taking a side by photographing her, right?”

He would nod, but he knows it doesn’t matter. He looks at me with dull disinterest, something that has been abused, something that knows there is nothing good left in this world.

“And you have learned the lesson far too late that there are some actions you cannot take back, some people you cannot cross. I wish I could tell you that I brought you here to remind you that you work for me. I did not. I brought you here as a sign to others to leave my mother alone, and you are going to die because you are a stupid man who did a stupid thing.” I can smell the blood on him, the sweat from his adrenaline and his tears. He keeps swallowing over and over.