Page 54 of Kingmakers, Year Four

My mother paces restlessly.

“Most definitely,” she says. “He’s buddied up with Foma Kushnir. Foma’s been tracking our withdrawals from the Gazprombank. He knows something’s up.”

“Yeah, he thinks Dom’s stealing money,” I snort, remembering how Bodashka Kushnir accused my cousin Kade of treachery and embezzlement.

“They’re not stupid,” my mother warns me. “They’re putting it together.”

My head is pounding, my blood pressure at a constant high for three fucking years now. I don’t know how much more I can take.

Forcing my voice steady, I ask her, “When’s the meeting?”

“The first week of January.”

I’m trying to think strategically, the way my mother would think.

Slowly, I say, “Dean knows Danyl, and he used to be friends with Bodashka Kushnir, though I don’t think they’re as close anymore. If Danyl plans to make a move, Dean could keep us informed . . .”

“How are you going to ask him that as Ares?”

“I’m not gonna ask him—I’ll tell Kade to do it. Dean likes him. He defended him to Bodashka last year.”

My mother considers this carefully before nodding.

“Talk to Kade. Don’t let Dean know you have anything to do with it. And for god’s sake, don’t let Cat hear about any of it.”

If only it were that easy to hide things from Cat Romero.

14

Ivan Petrov

Twenty-one Years Ago

The party on the HI SO Terrace is intended to celebrate the birth of my son, though no one in Russia would ever call it a baby shower.

I’ve become familiar with many American traditions since marrying Sloane. She clings to few of them, considering herself a citizen of nowhere and a resident of anywhere she pleases.

Still, she likes to compare Russian customs with American.

This is her nature as a chameleon: observing and adapting the practices of those around her, until she might convince you that you’d grown up next door to one other.

She finds the Russian superstitions around pregnancy and birth highly amusing.

She laughed when my soldiers firmly refused to acknowledge her burgeoning belly, even when they bumped right into it in a cramped hallway.

“They don’t want to invite the eye of the devil on your unborn baby,” I informed her.

“I think he already has the devil inside him,” Sloane said, giving me a wink. “Do you remember what we were doing when we conceived him . . .?”

I remember that night well. Sloane and I had just liberated four million in unmarked American bills from an armored truck outside of Gatchina. Robbery is not a usual part of our business, but Sloane had gotten a tip on the unusually large cash transfer, and she was intent on intercepting it.

I had never seen her as energized as she was that night. She insisted that we go, just the two of us, and she organized the entirety of the heist. I let her take the lead for once, watching her work with the skill and precision of a master.

Once we had the money, we hauled it up to the penthouse suite of the Astoria hotel, bribing the clerk for the use of the service elevator.

Sloane spread the money out on the bed, then stripped naked and lay on top of the pile of bills, offering me her body and the cash as our anniversary present.

We had been married four years.

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