Their bodies dropped to the deck, and Page dropped his fork on his plate, his béchamel sauce splashing on my bare arm. I was seated right next to him, a position that had thoroughly annoyed me as it allowed him to peer down the front of my dress all night long.

Now he wasn’t looking anywhere but at my father, his face frozen in horror.

He started to sputter and beg, trying to explain himself.

“It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t give them any information, they broke into the vault! They stole the stone! I had nothing to do with it, I didn’t—”

My father stayed perfectly calm, and even kept eating his halibut in measured bites.

“Who stole it?” he asked.

“It was Nero Gallo!” Page cried. “I’m sure of it. He came to the vault a week before. He was looking at the layout, the cameras . . .”

“Where is the stone now?”

“I don’t know!” Page moaned. “I’ve been looking and listening. I have money out in a hundred places, bribes if anyone can tell me where it went . . .”

My father ignored this, since obviously Page’s efforts were yielding nothing.

“How did Nero Gallo find out about the stone?” he demanded.

That was where Raymond Page hesitated. He didn’t want to tell that particular piece of information. Maybe that’s when my father decided to torture him. Or maybe he planned to do that either way.

We had sailed far out on the lake by that point. Far away from shore or any other boats. If Page had been paying attention, he would have noticed that we weren’t following the usual cruise route.

The water was rough that far from shore. It rocked the boat hard, making my wine slosh over the rim of my glass. I hadn’t touched the wine, or my food. That was another thing Page might have noticed, had he not been so distracted by my chest instead.

Rodion tied Page to a chair. He stripped off his shoes and socks. He got a set of bolt cutters with wicked, curved blades, and he opened them around Page’s big toe.

“Noooo!” Page howled. “Please! I’ll tell you everything!”

“Yes. You will,” my father said, taking another bite of his fish.

He nodded to Rodion, and Rodion squeezed the handles of the bolt-cutters with a vicious snap. Page’s toe rolled away across the wooden deck.

In the end, Page confessed everything—that he’d told his daughter about the diamond, because she had a fascination with gemstones. That he’d even let her hold it once, after swearing her to secrecy. That Nero Gallo had seduced said daughter and convinced her to bring him down to the vault. That she had likely told him about the diamond concealed within.

“Please don’t hurt her,” he mumbled, through lips pale with shock and blood loss. He had lost every one of his toes by that point, and some of his fingers. “It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know . . . she didn’t know anything . . .”

I was forced to watch the whole thing, and Adrian, too. He sat on the other side of me, holding my hand beneath the linen tablecloth.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. But I couldn’t do any of that with my father so close. I kept my eyes fixed on my plate, wishing I could stop my ears from hearing Page’s howls of pain.

Certain that he’d learned every piece of information Page knew, my father nodded to Rodion. Rodion put a bullet in the back of the banker’s head. Then he finished removing the rest of Page’s fingers, and pulled his teeth too, so it would be harder to identify the body if it were ever found. He stripped off Page’s clothes, as well as the bodyguards’. Then he weighed down the bodies and dumped them over the railing into the lake.

The deckhands started mopping the blood off the floor. My father bought the boat and hired the staff himself. That’s another thing Page might have noticed—that every one of the staff had Bratva tattoos on their arms or necks, beneath their crisp white polo shirts.

But most people aren’t very observant. Even in our world, where a momentary lapse can get you killed.

As the boat turned around to head back to shore, my stomach lurched. I had to stand up and walk to the railing, where I leaned over and vomited into the water.

“What’s wrong, malen’kiy?” my father asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just a little seasick.”

“Drink your wine,” he said. “That will help.”

I sat down again, picking up the slender stem of my glass between shaking fingers. When I lifted the glass to my lips, I saw a tiny droplet of blood suspended in the wine, dark as garnet against the amber-colored Riesling. My father was watching, so I had to drink it down.

These are all the things I’m remembering while my father watches me with his ice-chip eyes. Eyes that look very like Suvorov’s portrait hanging on the wall.

My father was in the KGB, in the OP Directorate—the division tasked with combatting organized crime. After being blocked for promotion by a rival, my father quit the agency and used what he learned to rise through the ranks of the Bratva instead. Within three years he was one of the biggest bosses in Moscow. He ordered his former antagonist to be murdered, along with his family.

Papa has a military mind. He’s a strategist. He makes plans and he executes them—ruthlessly and flawlessly. He’s no flashy gangster like Kristoff, egotistical and easily outwitted.

“You will keep seeing Sebastian Gallo,” he repeats. “But don’t give yourself to him. You have to keep him hungry. Leave him wanting.”

“Yes, father.” I nod.

My virginity is just one more tool in my father’s arsenal—something he’ll give away at a time of his choosing, to the man of his choice.

I won’t have any say in the matter.

7

Sebastian

I keep taking Yelena out, more and more frequently.

She asks me to meet her places, probably because she doesn’t want me getting the third degree from her father any more than necessary. She tells me he knows that we’re dating. Which is a relief—this could blow up in my face spectacularly, if we were sneaking around behind his back.

Actually, it’s my family that’s in the dark more than hers.

I know Nero will think I’m out of my mind dating the daughter of the newest Bratva boss—especially when our past conflicts aren’t entirely smoothed over. But he’s too busy with the South Shore Development to notice.

As long as I keep handling my side of the family business, picking up the slack now that Dante’s gone, and taking care of anything my father doesn’t feel like doing, nobody pays much attention to what I do in my spare time.

That spare time is increasingly devoted to Yelena.

The more time I spend with her, the more I want.

I take her all over Chicago, showing her the city.

I take her to the Art Institute and the Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park. We go shopping on the Magnificent Mile and visit the Lincoln Park Zoo. I offer to take her up to the 360 Observation Deck, knowing that she might decline since she’s not a fan of heights. But, buoyed by the success of our Ferris Wheel ride, Yelena agrees to go.

We take the elevator up 103 floors. When we step out, we’re faced with a wall of glass, with the entire city spread out beneath us. We’re so high up that it’s almost like being in an airplane instead of a building. I point out the parts of the city I recognize: the marinas, the river, the area of Lincoln Park we visited two days ago.