12. Kozlov's Table

Elena's POV

Zima smelled of butter and woodsmoke and cold salt water.

The door closed on the wind behind us, and the warmth settled over my face like a dish towel fresh from the dryer. A long room. Candles. Low voices that went lower, table by table, as Jax walked through.

I kept my eyes down.

So I learned Zima by its floor. Black and white tiles, scrubbed until the grout had gone pale. A waiter's shoes, cracked across the toes. Gideon's boots, stopping beside the door and planting there. Jax's shoes next to mine, never more than half a step ahead.

And at the end of the room, under a long white table, a pair of brown leather shoes so new the soles had barely creased.

Every part of me turned toward them. Five years of reading that man's feet to know what kind of night it would be.

You don't look at him.

I looked at the tablecloth.

"Jax." The voice was warm and unhurried, with a faint catch on the r. "Nine years, and you haven't aged a day. It's very rude of you."

"Viktor."

"And this must be the lady."

Two hands came into the small circle I allowed myself to see. Long fingers. Nails buffed to a soft shine. A heavy gold ring on the smallest finger. Clean hands, the kind that had never carried anything heavier than a menu, and had never needed to.

"Mrs. Vance. Please, sit here, beside me."

"She sits by me," Jax said.

A pause. Then a soft laugh. "Of course she does."

Jax drew out the chair at his left, and I sat. Across the cloth, the new brown shoes shifted. On Kozlov's other side sat a man I could see only from the wrists down: young hands, nails bitten to the pink, and a steel watch worn with its face turned to the inside of his wrist. As we sat, he turned his hand over and looked at it.

One.

A waiter set a glass at Jax's place without being asked and poured from a square bottle with a black label. I knew that bottle. I had watched it travel from hand to hand every night through the one-way glass, under the green lamp, at the table where the six sat.

"I took the liberty," Kozlov said. "It is still your brand?"

"It is." Jax didn't touch it.

Someone had told him. The thought went through me like cold water down a sleeve. One of those six men had leaned close to this man's ear and told him what Jax drank.

"Elena."

Mark's voice. Just my name, and my stomach clenched the way it used to at the sound of the garage door.

"You look well," he said. "Doesn't she look well, Viktor? I told you she cleans up nice." A breath. "Sit up, sweetheart. You're slouching."

My spine snapped straight before he'd finished the word.

I hadn't decided to do it. My shoulders went back, my chin came level, my hands found each other in my lap, all on their own, the way they had at a hundred dinners with his boss and his brother and his friends. I was sitting exactly the way he liked, in a stranger's restaurant, in another man's silk, and I could not make my body stop obeying him.

In the blade of the knife beside my plate I could see a small curved piece of his face. He was smiling.

"You don't tell her how to sit anymore, Vance," Jax said, in the same voice he'd used for the whiskey. "You sold that on your own floor."

In the knife, the smile wavered.

Plates came. White fish in butter, bread still steaming, something green and sharp with lemon. The smell went straight to the hollow under my ribs. Jax didn't lift his fork. So I didn't lift mine. I sat with my hands folded and my mouth full of water and let the bread go cold.

"Your lady isn't eating," Kozlov observed.

"Neither am I."

"You think I would poison a guest at my own table?"

"I think you'd let someone else do it," Jax said, "and send flowers to the funeral."

Kozlov laughed, delighted, as if Jax had paid him a compliment. Maybe he had.

"Then let us not waste your evening." Kozlov lifted two fingers.

The young man at his side bent and set a leather case on the cloth. The latches snapped open. I didn't look up, but I didn't have to. The case sat right at the edge of my sight, and inside it, packed in tight rows, were bundles of money in paper bands.

Kozlov began to lay them out himself. One at a time. Slowly, along the white cloth between the candles, the way a man deals cards when he already knows who wins.

I counted. I couldn't help it. I had been counting things my whole life to keep my hands still: minutes, steps, pins, streetlights.

Nine. Ten. Eleven.

The young man turned his wrist and checked his watch.

Two.

Twenty-four. Twenty-five.

"Mr. Vance's account," Kozlov said. "In full. Count it again if you like." His fingers came to rest, light, on the last bundle. "And now, the lady."

"Since when do you pay other men's debts, Viktor?" Jax said.

"Since they started being useful."

Jax laid his hand flat on the money.

"The debt is closed." He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. Behind me, Gideon's boots crossed the tiles, and the case was lifted and gone.

Kozlov's hands never moved. They lay still on the cloth, the gold ring catching the light, while his money walked away behind me. He didn't even turn his head.

Nobody lets that much money go without a glance. Not unless they expect to get it back.

"The witness," Jax said, "isn't for sale."

The word hung over the candles.

"Witness?" Mark said. "What do you mean, witness? She's—"

"What a careful word," Kozlov said softly. I felt his eyes settle on me, the way you feel a draft before you find the open window. "She has slept three nights under your roof, Jax. She has seen how your doors open. I find I am curious what else she has seen." His ring tapped the cloth, once. "Double. Tonight, in cash. And you never hear Mr. Vance's name again."

Double.

Twice what Mark owed. More than our house, our cars, our whole marriage put together. A price I would never have been worth to anyone, spoken over a plate of cooling fish, and nobody at the table laughed.

In the blade of my knife, Mark's smile came back, wider than before.

That was the part that cut. Not the money. Him. Pleased. Proud, almost, the way he'd been proud of the Porsche. As if I had finally fetched a good price.

"Mrs. Vance." Kozlov's voice turned toward me, gentle as a nurse. "What do you say? Would you like to go home with your husband tonight?"

Look at you before I answer anyone.

I lifted my eyes for the first time since the door, and they went to Jax.

He didn't look back at me. He was watching Kozlov, his profile carved and still in the candlelight. Only his jaw moved. Once.

"She answers to me," he said.

"Everything has a price, Jax. You used to understand that."

"I still do." Jax turned the whiskey glass once in his fingers and set it down without drinking. "Vance put her on the table. I took her off it. She doesn't go back on."

"The debt's paid." Mark's voice climbed. "She's my wife. She comes home with—"

Kozlov lifted one finger from the tablecloth. He didn't look at Mark. He didn't need to.

Mark's mouth closed.

In the blade of my knife, I watched my husband turn toward the man beside him and wait, very still, to be told what kind of night it was going to be.

For a long moment, nobody spoke. A candle guttered. Somewhere behind me, a glass touched a glass.

Then Kozlov smiled. I saw it, because I had forgotten to lower my eyes. A pleasant face. Silver at the temples. The polite smile of a man holding a door open that he means to lock behind you.

"Then there is nothing left to discuss," he said, "but dessert. And your drive home."

Beside him, the young man turned his wrist.

Three.

He didn't look bored. I knew bored. This was something else, something I had worn on my own face every night at seven o'clock for five years, standing in a clean kitchen, watching the window for headlights.

It was the face of someone counting down to a thing he couldn't stop.

He looked at his watch. Then he looked past me, through the tall window, at the black road that ran along the harbor.

The road we would take home.