Page 6 of The Payback

My new bride sits at the head table with her fake mother—their heads bowed together as they whisper to one another. She looks more nervous than when she walked down the aisle a couple of hours ago. The only moment she broke her role was during our kiss, and fuck, do I want her to break it again.

I rub my lower lip in thought as I look out over the lake from the dark corner I’ve moved to. The Loeb Boathouse in Central Park is lit with candles as our guests sit on the veranda, eating whatever menu the chef put together on short notice.

It took three calls and one big cheque to open the place again for the night, especially after the City of New York deemed it short on operational costs and closed it months ago.

“Your father would have liked this,” Nik says from beside me as he approaches.

I incline my head. He’s right, but he’s not here to enjoy it, so what does it matter? He was an impossible man to please unless I was doing exactly what he laid out for me and somehow did it beyond his demanding expectations.

Truthfully, I’d given up on pleasing my father long before he was murdered by one of our own eighteen months ago.

Not that anyone but the killer knows he died with a knife to the heart and an ice pick to the temple. Overkill, I know, but it’s the exact method Nik uses when he’s on a job. He’s always said it leaves nothing to chance.

I’d been prepared to forgive him and move past what tore us apart ten years ago when he returned from his stint with Interpol as a plant. But then, a few days later, my father was murdered, and I was left utterly alone with an old friend returned and the most probable suspect.

Having found my father’s body, I had two choices. I could out the murder or fabricate everything, hoping to catch the assailant with proof because the motivations for it to be Nik do not line up even though it wouldn’t be the first time Nik murdered someone I was close to.

Everyone thinks he passed peacefully in his sleep because that was the story I’d told and paid off the morgue to write in the reports. All this time, I’ve lain in wait, anticipating a slip-up—or, sometimes, trying to force one.

“Why are you here?” I ask Nik, never taking my eyes off the lake’s calm surface. A torrent of emotion swirls under my skin, but my face is impassive as I feel Nik’s probing stare on my face.

“Wrapped it up early. The Italians won’t be a problem anymore.”

“You know the consequences of a job half-done.” I finally turn towards him when I hear his Zippo lighter flick open. He lights his cigarette instead of meeting my eyes and leans forward, resting his inked forearms on the metal railing.

“Hmm.”

Nik can read me like a book; he always could. I keep my frustration from showing at his mere presence. And right now, more than just my life depends on keeping that fucking book shut.

“Interesting choice of bride.” His voice stops me in my tracks as I turn to leave. “Where’d you find her?”

On my father’s orders, Nik was a plant at Interpol for ten years, which they still don’t know to the best of our knowledge. They just think he stole a diamond and high-tailed it out of there.

We’d been best friends since my parents adopted him. He was recently orphaned in France, and our parents had been friends before they relocated. He moved in with us in Moscow, and we all emigrated to the US soon after.

My father ordered him to Interpol after he finished school, but at that point, we’d grown so distant, it didn’t feel like I’d lost anything. As loathe as I am to admit it, Nik was the best pick for Interpol because of his language skills and ability to keep his shit locked down.

In recent years, I’d come to understand why he did what he did and was prepared to extend the olive branch when he came home from Interpol. But then my father’s death happened, throwing those plans out with the rubbish.

Nik’s job with the Italians was meant to be extended because he would have studied the few agents they have that do undercover work. I can’t have him fucking this all up; too much is riding on this. I only contacted Interpol instead of another agency because I knew we no longer had a plant there.

My freedom and a chance to walk away for good hang in the balance, especially with what I learned earlier this week. My brigadier has become a little big for his britches and is importing something we haven’t discussed. Never mind my father was the one to start the operation. But now, Sergei is continuing it, and I need to shut it down.

“Alliance marriage,” I say, my teeth clenched. His face is impassive, and he sucks on that cigarette like it’s the air he needs to live. If he knows where I really found her, he isn’t letting on.

“With whom?”

I look down my nose at him; an act only made possible because he’s still leaning over the railing. He’s got an inch on me when we’re at full height. “You forget yourself, Nikita. You answer to me.”

Nik hums that noncommittal noise again as he takes a drag of his cigarette, the skull on the back of his tattooed hand illuminated by the glowing cherry at the end as it flares to life.

“Yes,Pakhan,” he says, using my honorific. He turns towards the lake again and stares off into the distance. It doesn’t escape my notice that he’s taken up a spot shrouded in darkness, like usual—keeping himself out of sight and away from anyone’s attention.

There was a time I’d trusted him more than anyone; he was a brother to me in every sense of the word. But those days are long gone, and some things are better left buried under the wreckage of our circumstances.

I cross the veranda, approaching the head table and my new wife.

“Elsa,” I greet as I pull my chair out and lower myself into it.

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