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“You had to say something,” I mutter. “At the start. I had it handled.”

“You did.”

“I was about to tell him to go to hell.”

“I know. I just thought he should hear the question twice.” He pauses. “The second time from someone he was scared of.”

“I'm scary.”

“You're terrifying.” His voice is warm. “He just didn't know it yet.”

Pyotr pulls the car up to the edge of the loading bay. The wipers swing back and forth.

I don't move.

“Rusakov isn't going to like this,” I say quietly. “He's going to do something.”

“Probably.” Garick looks out at the river, and for a second, something cold moves through his face, so quick I nearly miss it. Then it's gone. “Let him try.”

I should be frightened by that. By the way he said it. By the flat certainty in his voice.

He opens the car door for me. I get in. He stands there in the rain, one hand on the top of the door, looking down at me.

“Same time tonight?” he asks.

I should say no. I have ledgers to read and a warehouse to sort out and four sisters who are going to interrogate me the second I walk in the door.

“Fine,” I say. “But it's still not a date.”

He smiles and closes the door.

As Pyotr pulls away, I watch him in the side mirror. He stays standing in the rain until we turn the corner, exactly like he did at the cemetery.

“He's a good man, Arina Yaroslavovna,” Pyotr says to the windshield.

“Papa thought so.”

Pyotr's eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. “And what do you think?”

I don't answer.

Garick

She's on time.

Eight o'clock exactly. The door of Tbiliso opens, and Arina walks in with rain in her hair and her chin already up, like she's been rehearsing the argument in the car.

That's progress. Last night, she made me wait thirteen minutes.

“Don't,” she says, sliding into the chair opposite me.

“I didn't say anything.”

“You were going to say something about me being on time.”

I smile at how well she already seems to know me. “I was going to say good evening.”

She narrows her eyes. Then she sees the bottle of Saperavi already open and breathing on the table, and the narrowing turns into something that looks a lot like resignation.