I wanted her to recognize me when I made my approach for real. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but that mattered to me. When I came up to her, I wanted her to know, bone-deep, that I wasn’t just some random stranger. And now, she did.
Maybe she didn’t know I was the guy who’d been looking out for her for weeks. The guy who wanted her stepfather dead for ever touching her. The guy who’d been with her every time she was lonely, every time she cried up in her room, and every time she hung up her punch bag up and hit and hit and hit, until her knuckles were raw instead. But she’d find all that out soon enough.
As long as I got it right, she was going to fall in love with me the way I’d fallen in love with her. It had to happen. Otherwise my life had no further purpose.
Granted, it was a lot to ask from a first meeting. I knew it had to be perfect, Valentin didn’t understand. All he cared about was the bloody job I was supposed to be doing.
“Use the stepdaughter, Maxim,” Valentin said once more, steepling his fingers as he leaned in closer to the camera on his side of the computer screen. “I am not understanding why you do not approach her yet.”
I gritted my teeth. There was nothing I wanted to do more. That morning I’d nearly walked right up to her. Valentin wouldn’t have been egging me on had he known I’d breached protocol. I’d wanted to break cover so badly and that was not the kind of approach he meant at all.
The night before, I’d watched her pick up the bullet from the sugar bag barely daring to move from the window in case she turned around and saw the curtain twitch, or the streetlight caught the lens of my scope. But God I wanted her to see me. I wanted her to know I was the one protecting her, keeping her safe and I always would.
“Her name’s Elizabeth.” My correction slipped out sternly. Valentin raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment.
I cleared my throat and folded my arms across my chest, trying and mostly failing to cover my hostility at him treating her like just another cog in the machine. “Elizabeth Harrington. She’s a member of a boxing gym. I think going there is my best bet.”
“Da. Good.” Valentin’s frown faded slowly. “Glad to hear it. It is very important Mr Sutherland’s list does not get out.”
“I know that, Valentin. Who do you take me for.”
The man raised a hand. “I’m not insulting you, Maxim. I’m saying you need to do this quickly. It transpires our exalted leader has gone and made a deal with the devil.”
I let out a muted grunt, unsurprised and braced for the worst. “What did he do this time?”
Valentin shared my opinion of Yakov Timoshenko, our longstanding Muscovite overlord. He was losing his grip, and he was out of touch with the modern world. We needed a more dynamic thinker at the helm to navigate the Bratva through the opportunities that were on offer.
Timoshenko was rooted in the past, still too keen to rule with brute force, and one day it was going to get all of us into trouble. Even I knew it wasn’t sustainable to keep making enemies disappear. There had to be more subtlety at some point, especially when all the global leaders wanted their sheen of respectability and the web of connections we wove more often than not tangled them up with things that couldn’t come out.
Corruption was more widespread than anyone outside of Russia liked to think, and by no means was it limited to the motherland.
My money had been on Valentin to step in as the next Autoritat for a while now. He’d been proactive about handling the brotherhood when Timoshenko’s glaring omissions had crept in. He’d been steering me more towards espionage and away from blunt, brutal hits, unless absolutely required. I wasn’t entirely displeased with that. Every kill lodged inside you, somewhere, and took its price.
But he was holding off instead of making his move. I imagined that the situation in Moscow was more complex than a brute in a suit like me could comprehend. Valentin was a cut above. All expensive education to match with the clothes and the watches, and the polished accent. Good for him. Good for all of us, if it got us where we needed to be. I knew these things took time.
“The FSB made an approach and he said we’d get the list back for them so they can avoid embarrassment. We can’t afford to let them down, but you know our main concern lies with keeping Roman’s name out of it. We can’t continue to operate if they freeze our most successful cleaning operation.”