Page 75 of Cruel Kiss

I shrug. "Well enough."

"Good. Tonight, you sleep in my bed again."

21

RONAN

The Other Yacht sells on a Tuesday.

I don't haggle. A man in Greenwich has wanted it for two years, so when Navi puts out the word that it's up for sale, the buyer doesn't even blink at the number. He wires it same-day. I sign the papers in the back of a car and don't look at them twice. It was a good boat. I ate a lot of good dinners on it.

I told myself once that I bought it because life was meant to be lived. I believed that when I said it.

I don't feel a thing when it's gone.

The Yacht stays. That one is sacred. Cali stood on the deck of it in my head a hundred times before she ever set foot near the water. I'm not selling the version of the future I keep parked in the harbor. A man has to keep one thing.

The money hits payroll Friday, like I promised. Grigor gets his men made whole and his own pocket paid back on top. I hand it out myself so nobody has to wonder, and as I do, I watch the relief move through the crew like heat coming back into frozenhands. For about four days, I think maybe I bought something with that boat besides a stay of execution.

Then Grigor calls another meeting.

It's the same fish place in Brighton Beach. Fewer men come this time. Sergei's here. Anatoly's not.

I notice that first. The empty chair.

"Anatoly?" I ask to the room.

Grigor's got his tea. He doesn't drink it. "His crew walked. Tuesday. All of them at once."

"To Lev."

"Correct."

I sit and process that unwelcome tidbit. Nobody fills the silence for me. That's how I know how bad it is.

"They got paid Friday," I say. "Every one of them. I put the money in their hands myself."

"They sure did," Grigor agrees. "Then Lev's people came Saturday and offered them triple."

"Triple? Is that a fucking joke? Lev doesn't have triple. He doesn't even have single, goddammit."

"He's got a picture," Grigor explains.

He reaches into his coat and puts a phone on the plastic tablecloth. He slides it toward me. On the screen is a photograph.

It's Pyotr.

He's thinner than I remember. Grayer. There's a bruise coming up under one eye. He's sitting in a chair in a room I don't recognize, holding a newspaper up next to his face. I lean in. It's this week's paper. The date's right there. Wednesday. Two days ago.

Proof of life.

"Lev's showing this around," Grigor explains. "To the men who are wavering. His pitch is, the pakhan turned the guns off and let the money-man get snatched up, and now, Lev's got the money-man, which means Lev's got the keys to the kingdom. So a smart man goes where the money is."

I look at Pyotr's face for a long time. A frightened old man with a bad heart and a dream of a cottage he'll never see. I gave him his exit. I took his marker and I let him go. I told myself I wasn't my father. I wasn't going to sink a scared old man in the marshes over a couple of dollars he took to ease his way out the door.

And Lev plucked him off a street in Istanbul. Now, Pyotr's holding a newspaper for a camera, and every wavering man in my operation is looking at that photo and wondering if he'll be next.

"He's alive," I say.