Domesticity

Ivan's Pov

Something was different about this week and I could not stop noticing it.

Nikolai was sitting at breakfast. He used to eat standing at the counter with his phone in one hand, already on three other things before he swallowed his first bite. 

Now he stayed, and looked up when Ace spoke. I had known Nikolai my entire life and he had never once looked up from something when he did not have to.

By the third morning I was watching openly.

"You are staring," Nikolai said without lifting his eyes from the newspaper.

"I am observing."

Ace looked between us from his end of the counter.

"Observing what." Nikolai still did not look up.

"You. You are different this week."

"I am the same as I have always been."

"You ate breakfast sitting down three days in a row." I leaned forward. "That has never happened in the thirty one years I have known you."

Ace made a sound that was almost a laugh and looked quickly back at his plate.

Nikolai set the newspaper down. "Do you have something useful to say."

"Not particularly." I smiled at him.

He picked the paper back up.

Ace pushed back from the counter. "Is there anything to do in this place. Anything that does not involve sitting."

"There is a gym on the east wing lower level."

"I thought the east wing was off limits."

"The lower level is separate. I will have someone take you down this afternoon."

"What equipment does it have."

"Weights, cardio machines, a punching bag."

Ace nodded. "And books. Do you have books that are not about finance or territory management or whatever it is you people read."

"You people," I repeated.

"Crime lords." He said it without blinking. "Mafia. Whatever the correct term is."

Nikolai made a sound from behind his newsspaper that was close enough to a laugh that both Ace and I looked at him. He did not lower the paper.

"There is a library off the main corridor. Mixed collection. Help yourself."

Ace nodded. "What else can I ask for."

"What else do you want."

"My own key to my room."

"No."

"My phone."

"No."

"The rooftop."

I glanced at Nikolai. Nikolai lowered the paper slowly and looked at Ace over the top of it. "Tomorrow. One hour. Musa on the door."

Ace held his look for a second like he was checking if it was real. "Okay. Thank you." He took his plate to the sink and left the room.

I waited until his footsteps faded up the stairs. "One hour. Musa on the door," I said to Nikolai. "You prepared that answer."

"I anticipated the request."

"Same thing."

"It is not."

"It is exactly the same thing and you know it." I leaned back. "You have been thinking about what to give him and at what pace."

Nikolai folded the newspaper. "Is that a problem."

"No. I am noting it. You do not usually manage people. You decide about them."

"He is not a decision."

"No. He is not." I looked toward the door he had walked through. "That is the part I keep thinking about."

"Say it directly."

"What happens when someone outside figures out we have something worth taking from us."

"We handle it."

"He is not something we handle the usual way."

"I know that." He picked up his coffee. "Which is exactly why we are not being careless."

"Stop it," he said a moment later.

"Stop what."

"Whatever you are doing with your face."

"I am sitting here quietly."

"You are enjoying this at my expense."

"I would never." I smiled into my mug.

He turned a page. The muscle in his jaw moved once and then released. That was Nikolai's version of losing an argument and he was fully aware that I knew it.

His phone rang and he answered it and was already walking toward the hallway before the first sentence was out. Gone in seconds.

I sat at the counter alone and picked up my own phone. One message from our ground man. Third surveillance position confirmed active overnight, east side of the building. Three rotating positions now, no face yet.

I forwarded it to Nikolai without comment and went to work.

Around midday I found Ace in the library. He had pulled three books off the shelf and was reading the back covers one after the other.

"Finding anything useful," I said from the doorway.

He looked up. "Depends on what useful means."

"Are any of them interesting."

He held one up. "This one is about the history of organised crime in Chicago. I feel like that is either very relevant or deeply ironic given where I am standing."

I laughed. "Take it."

"I was going to anyway." He set it on the table and looked at the others. "Do you actually read. You and Nikolai."

"Yes."

"What does Nikolai read."

"History mostly. Military strategy. The occasional biography of someone he finds worth studying."

"And you."

"Whatever I pick up." I leaned against the doorframe. "I read faster than Nikolai so I go through more."

Ace looked at the shelf. "He has biographies in here. Marked ones. Someone put notes in the margins."

"That would be Nikolai."

"He writes in books."

"He annotates them. There is a difference in his mind."

Ace opened the cover of one of the marked ones and looked at the first page. His expression shifted slightly. "He writes clean," he said, almost to himself. "The handwriting."

"He was taught by someone who believed bad handwriting was a moral failing."

Ace closed the book carefully and put it back on the shelf. He picked up the Chicago history book instead. "This one," he said. "I am starting with this one."

"Good choice." I pushed off the doorframe. "Lunch is in twenty minutes."

He nodded, already reading the first page as I left.

At dinner that evening the three of us sat at the long table and the chef put food down and left. Ace looked at the spread and then looked at us.

"Do you always eat like this," he said.

"Like what," I said.

"Formally. At a table. With someone who cooks for you."

"Yes."

He thought about that. "Even when it is just the two of you."

"Especially when it is just the two of us," Nikolai said, not looking up from his plate.