Page 119 of One For my Enemy

“Not long,” Marya assured him, accepting the pile of cash. “I take it you don’t care for the dealer?”

“Who, Eric?” Lev said, making a face. “He’s detestable. But not a threat.”

“I don’t typically go into business with threats,” Marya agreed, and for a moment, Lev’s mouth quirked slightly, something lingering on his tongue.

“You know,” he ventured, “I used to think you were terrifying, but now I think you remind me quite a bit of my brother Dima.”

“Oh?” Marya asked, careful not to betray any particular expression. “Well, I’m disappointed to hear I’ve lost my intrigue.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just… I understand you better now,” Lev said. “How you think, I mean.”

Marya arched a brow in warning.

“No, I just mean—” Lev chuckled to himself. “You know how in fairy tales, in stories, you never quite understand why a villain is a villain? They’re cruel and coarse and ugly, of course, but impossible to understand. But you and Dima, you’re the same. You’re meticulous, calculating. You’re ruthless, but it isn’t… it isn’t who you are. It’s just how you work. Easier, I think,” he determined with a long glance at her, “for both of you, to simply remove your feelings from the equation.”

“Trying to get familiar, Fedorov?” Marya said, confirming nothing.

“No,” he assured her with a low laugh. “But now that I know you’re like my brother, I know you must have a plan you’re not telling me. No one is more careful than Dima,” he explained, a point with which Marya wished, fruitlessly, to disagree. “With him, things always seem distant and meaningless at first, and then, in retrospect, they make sense. Things come together.”

“Your point?”

Lev shrugged. “You have a plan, but you’ve only told me the most superficial parts of it. If you were Dima, though,” he suggested, leaning forward with half a smile on his face, “you’d have told me the rest of it by now.”

She gauged him for a second, then rolled her eyes.

“You’re a clever little idiot, Lev Fedorov,” she told him, and he grinned.

“Might have worked,” he said. “Besides, made you like me a bit more, didn’t it?”

Internally, Marya sighed. If anyone was like Dimitri Fedorov, she thought silently, it was certainly his youngest brother.

“The plan is very simple,” she reminded him. “It’s not a secret. We’re going to make as much money as we can.”

“Yes, but why?” Lev asked.

“Because money talks, Fedorov. It’s really not clandestine in the slightest.”

“Oh, come on, Marya. You’re the woman who nearly killed my brother,” he reminded her, “only to die bringing him back to life. Don’t tell me your motives are something as uncomplicated as greed.”

She did like him, she decided.

Which was deeply unfortunate.

“Not everything is a plot, Solnyshko,” she said, and Lev tilted his head.

“Little sun,” he translated. “Funny. I always think of my brother as the sun.”

Marya paused.

“Do you?” she asked.

“Yes,” Lev said, eyeing her expectantly.

She sighed.

“What is it, Fedorov?” she demanded, and his smile broadened.

“You’re not telling me something.”

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