7. Andrey

7

ANDREY

"There it is," she says. "The building at the end of the street."

I would've seen it myself, but I was fixated on watching her knee bounce nervously for the last fifteen minutes. When I look up, my face curdles into a frown.

"This is where you live?" I make no attempt to mask my disgust.

"We can't all live in ten-million-dollar brownstones," she snaps back. "Some of us have to make do."

Shura parks and stays behind the wheel as I get out of the car along with Natalia. "I'd call it a rat-infested hole in the wall, but that would be disrespectful to rats, holes, and walls."

"Don't be an asshole." She bats at my arm with the back of her hand.

It's such a familiar gesture that I turn to her in surprise. She must be just as surprised, because she looks away from me pointedly. "Well, anyway… Thanks for the ride. I don't think we'll see each other again, so?—"

"You're not going to invite me in?"

"Invite you in where?"

I answer by striding past her and through the front door of her building. After a moment, Natalia groans and follows me.

A lightbulb in what barely passes for a lobby flickers to life for a moment before it thinks better of it and snuffs itself right back out. Bugs and rodents skitter in the ceiling.

"Come on," Natalia orders as she heads for the stairs. "This way. You're in for a hike."

"Let me guess: the elevator's out of order?"

"Has been since I moved in. But on the bright side, I've got great calves now."

On the seventh-floor landing, Natalia leads me to the apartment on the right— 702 . She unlocks the door and flips a switch. Cheap fluorescent light floods the apartment.

"Go ahead," she sighs, sweeping an arm to encompass the room. "Judge away."

It takes me a matter of seconds to get the measure of the place. The bones of it are as much of a disgrace as the rest of the building. Water-stained walls, cracked crown molding, windowsills dripping murky, rust-colored condensation from A/C box units.

But there is life here in spite of all that. A haphazard pile of books next to a couch with a well-worn butt imprint on one of the cushions. Floating bookshelves with carefully arranged knickknacks—shot glasses and coffee mugs, crystal balls, hand-painted watercolors.

And photographs. So many photographs.

I pull down a framed picture of a young girl with a gap-toothed grin, hedged in on either side by a man and a woman.

"How old were you in this picture?"

"Six," she murmurs without hesitation. "It was right after I turned six."

I peer closer. She inherited her mother's looks—the dark hair, the heart-shaped face, the small button nose. Her father's contribution is limited to those bright emerald eyes.

Suddenly, I'm looking at my empty hands. Natalia has plucked the frame from my grasp and flattened it against her chest. "Let me get you a glass of water."

She walks the frame into the kitchen and stashes it in a drawer.

She's calmer with something to do, but even as she fills a glass with water and slides it across the counter towards me, she's tense.

"When did they die?"

She freezes. Her breath rattles in her chest. "You really need to leave."

"You haven't answered all my questions."

"Ask better ones then."

"Does your friend spend a lot of time at Neon Moon?"

Those green eyes sharpen. "Leave Katya out of it. She may have horrible taste in men, but that doesn't make her guilty of… whatever it is you're accusing her of."

"Spying for Nikolai Rostov."

"Spying?" she splutters in disbelief. "You obviously don't know Katya Petrova very well. If you did, you would know that she's the least subtle person in the world. She'd make a horrible spy."

"Petrova? She's Russian?"

Natalia's cheeks flood scarlet. "Listen, she's not… she's not like you. She's not part of your crowd."

I round the kitchen counter slowly, cornering her against the sink. "And what is my crowd, exactly?"

Her eyes slink down to my waist and I realize she's just clocked the gun in my holster. "Oh, God," she whispers. "It's true…"

"You're going to have to be more specific."

Her gaze locks on mine. "You're in some sort of… mafia. The Russian variety. Katya said it's called a… a?—"

"Bratva."

Goosebumps spread across her throat. The moonlight streaming in from the window behind her highlights the soft, wispy hairs on her arms, each of them standing on end.

"Your friend seems to know an awful lot for someone you claim is completely out of the loop."

Her jaw tightens and she pushes herself off the sink. "Katya was just repeating to me all the bullshit your brother told her!" she cries out. "She didn't actually believe any of it."

"Until tonight. When you two little butterflies decided to fly right into a spider's web. You know what happens when you try to escape a spider's web, don't you?" I take another step towards her and she backs further against the sink. "You thrash and you fight and you scream and you beg. But the more resistance you put up, the deeper you get entangled."

She tries to put a brave face on. "Thanks for the Discovery Channel lesson, but I'm more of an HGTV girl myself."

I put a palm against her slim, trembling throat. Softly. Just to feel her pulse. "You don't get to walk away from me until I say you can, lastochka ."

She's gone very still. Her eyes are rippling with fear, but she lifts her chin.

"You're good at this, aren't you?" she whispers. "Threats. Intimidation."

"If you want to call it that."

"Are all your victims helpless women?"

I press myself against her, feeling her soft curves meet the hard ridges of my body. "I'm willing to bet you're not as helpless as you pretend to be."

"Yeah?" Her breath is warm. She leans closer. "You're not wrong."

Out of nowhere, she reaches towards my holster.

Before I can stop her, she snatches my gun and aims it right at my face.

I can only laugh. I wonder if she knows that I could disarm her so easily. One swift move is all it would take. But frankly…

I'm dying to know what she'll do next.