My eyes flickered open. I locked my gaze with Lev’s, struggling to sit up higher to face him. “With all respect, Avtoritet, I want an explanation as to why you think it acceptable to make ‘suggestions’ to me.” The sense of violation that had started in the bathroom and haunted me all the way to this apartment curdled and grew. “I’ve worked for you in good faith all these years. Or have I?”
“I’ve never risked this with you before, Alexi. The only reason I tried was to relieve your pain. Please.” Lev pursed his lips, weighing his words. “Look… anything I say on this matter must never be repeated to anyone. Anyone. Not even if you suspect them of being a… spook. Not Vassily, not Nicolai. No one and nothing. Do you agree?”
This had to have been the first time he’d stuffed up like this, met someone who hadn’t just let their mind be rolled. He was a spook, a different breed of mage to me. Lev had played his magical cards so close to his chest that he practically stuffed them in his mouth and chewed. “Fine. Agreed.”
Lev sighed. He rose from his kneel, dragged a chair across, and set it by the sofa. When he sat, he perched on the edge and crossed an ankle over his other knee. “Sergei knows. He’s always known. I discovered my ability after nearly dying in prison and honed it while serving with Sergei and your father in Kolyma.”
Kolyma. Just the mention of the place made Lev’s face gray and his fingers twitch while he moved, as if reflexively looking for the stub of a cigarette or the end rind of a piece of bread. That he had some magical ability explained how this soft, effeminate intellectual had survived the gold mines of northeastern Siberia. The name made my mouth turn dry and my palms itch. Perhaps it was an ancestral memory, inherited through the blood. “I understand why it is a secret, Avtoritet. No one else knows?”
“No. No one else knows. And they have no need to know. I’m only useful in some places and certain ways, Alexi. My ability has always been subtle… Suggestion, hypnosis, eavesdropping. A useful skill to have in prison.”
A useful skill to have in the Organizatsiya. I could readily imagine him ‘suggesting’ that our old Avtoritet needed to be killed and replaced. Nic was right. Vassily was a fool to think of challenging Lev, and I’d been a fool to even entertain the thought that we’d find a way. “So Sergei knows Rodion is dead?”
“Of course. He ordered him killed.” Lev leaned in a little. “Rod was only ever meant to be a temporary fix. He had no view of the big picture, and he was as corrupt as Semyon. Sergei has plans for this place, Alexi… but that is all I will say of this matter. You are not a captain, or Vor v Zakone. You are young and American. There are parts of the business you still have no right to know.”
His words stung, and I looked down. When I thought back on my late teens—my grades, my horse-riding trophies, my accomplishments and first successful hits—I felt they were mine. My achievements. That is a very American way to think, but that was not how the old Soviet men thought. My achievements were theirs. They had put in the money, time, and energy, like I was a garden and they the gardeners. They’d sent me to the good school, bought the horse, taught me the skills that helped me succeed. He was right. Suddenly, my own early hardships and Vassily’s hardships in prison, whatever they were, seemed vastly inconsequential. Compared to Kolyma, Fishkill was a palace resort. Neither of us could have survived the things our fathers endured. “Yes, Avtoritet.”
“So, tell me how you ended up this way.” Lev regarded me levelly, but he looked a little owlish, with bags under his eyes and lines around his mouth. “Nic said you were ambushed.”
“At Vincent’s,” I replied. The details of the night were slippery, out of order. I struggled to prioritize them. “By a spook named Carmine. He works for Manelli and could even be the one who set up Semyon’s security… but that isn’t the most important thing. He doesn’t know who Vincent Manelli is. He says Vincent is an imposter.”
“That’s not possible,” Lev replied. The confidence in his tone was unsettling. “He’s been vetted by George Laguetta and by me. He’s been able to provide the contacts he claimed to have.”
“The fact remains. They believe he’s an imposter using the family name and are trying to find out his identity,” I said. “And they’ve pinned Frank Nacari on us.”
“They’ve… unless someone told them, they should have no idea that we are involved.” Lev had the look of a man reaching his limit of stress. He wasn’t the one who’d had a bomb set under his car and a pistol shoved in his mouth.
“Well, someone rigged my car. If it was the Manellis, then someone told them that I was on this job.” I tried to keep the bitterness from my voice and failed. “Carmine mentioned that he had a ‘little bird’ who told him about Vincent. Someone is working against us.”
“Already? I hoped this sort of thing would have died with Semyon.” Lev frowned. “What a mess.”
What an understatement. I pushed myself to the edge of the sofa, easing my feet to the ground. I couldn’t bend my knee, but it was able to take my seated weight. “Do you have any idea who might be trying to take me out, Avtoritet?”
Lev regarded me in silence for a long moment, running his tongue over his teeth. I watched him carefully, but he showed none of the subtle signs of guilt. No contraction of the pupils, no nose or neck rubbing, no nervous hands, no flushed cheeks. “Not many people know that Vincent has gone missing. Did you tell Vassily, perhaps?”
“No.” The word burst out before I could stop it. “Vassily had nothing to do with this.”
“Well, Alexi, you have to understand something.” Lev leaned in, hands folded between his knees. “Sergei still hopes to make Vassily Avtoritet of New York in the future… and you have been working for me. Loyally, I might add. Vassily has been gone for five years. He’s an exceptionally good liar, and your acting out on your father has had quite a ripple effect, in terms of your place within the organization.”
“I didn’t ‘act out.’ He was a monster. A rabid dog.” And a master at convincing people that he was never at fault. Everyone made excuses for him. “Vassily hardly knows anything about it.”
“I heard that it was discussed with Vassily last night.” Lev shrugged. “You probably should have told him before Petro did. He has been exposed to the worst possible version of the story already.”
“He’s only been out two days. I was planning to tell him when this happened.” My head was throbbing, and it wasn’t just from the headache. Every one of the words coming out of Lev’s mouth nettled my ears. “Vassily is my sworn-brother. And Grisha deserved everything I gave him.”
“It’s arguable whether or not he deserved it.” Lev grimaced. “And it doesn’t change the fact that everyone is now frightened of what you’re capable of. Including Vassily. I can’t think of any other people who would know you were on this job. I assume you told him?”
Arguable? When I remembered my father, I remembered a drunkard, a half-seen bestial shadow in the darkness of my bedroom. I remembered the rise and fall of a tire iron, but not the face of the man he’d beaten to death in front of me. I remembered… not all that much, in all honesty. The days before I had made the rainy midnight run to Vassily’s family home and the period between my thirteenth birthday and my mid-teens was a black hole. There was nothing but nothing, the complete absence of memory. The few memories I had before then—that first witnessed murder behind a bakery in Red Hook, other odds and ends—had only returned after I’d killed him.
“Alexi?”
“I mentioned I was on a job, Avtoritet.” I looked up at him, but it was an effort. “I did not share the details, and especially not the details of my appointments. You were the only one who could have known that.”