Page 162 of Blood & Snow
No demands from Arkady Sokolov.
He has her, and he's making me wait.
My only choice is to get help, so I drive to Leonid's house, already steeling myself against his anger.
The gate opens when I pull up.
The guards recognize my car.
They don't stop me.
I park in the drive and walk to the front door.
A man in a black suit opens it before I can knock.
He nods and steps aside.
"He's in his study," he says, which is as much greeting as I'll ever get in this place.
Leonid is a hard man, but I hope he will hear me out instead of telling me to write Nadya off as a lost cause.
Certainly he can understand how a man needs a good woman in his life.
That she's more than just an asset.
I walk through the house on my way to his study.
The wealth here's obscene.
All the pretension oozes out at me as I realize how absurd it is to have all of this and no one to share it with.
And maybe that's why women like Nadya are more dangerous to him than the whores on his payroll.
Women like Nadya remind men like Sokolov—men like me—that love can exist, and that intimacy is a rare gift offered by the gods to men who don't deserve it.
I've taken it for granted because it's what I've been trained to do, and now the woman I love is caged.
How perfectly and painfully fitting that my little bird is locked away outside my reach.
A true punishment for my failure, which I intend to rectify as quickly as possible.
I find him in the study, sitting behind a desk working on some sort of documents.
He looks up when I enter but his expression doesn't change.
"Xander," he says.
"I didn't expect to see you so soon. Is it finished now?"
His gaze flicks to meet mine briefly then falls to his work again and I realize he thinks Sokolov is dead.
He has no clue what's going on.
I close the door behind me.
"I need your help."
Leonid sets down the pen he was holding and leans back in his chair, his fingers steepled beneath his chin.
