“You in there, Ezeriņa?” he shouted though the hidden door.
“No. I’m off golfing in the Ladies Open at Edinburgh,” responded a feminine voice. “Three over par, so far.”
“The ninth green tilts to the left. Good luck, my dear.”
He continued to the greenhouse, climbed stone steps, and opened a door into a humid, lighted world. A comparatively small structure given the grandiosity of everything else at Aristov Manor, the inside garden showed a tamer, more reflective side of the master. Few outside the family saw this aspect of the feared oligarch.
But tameness and domesticity had limits. Terrible orders were often uttered among the orchids. Dudnyk the executor of those commands.
“Ilya, why the delay?” asked Konstantin, dressed in gardening clothes, and leaning over some viny plant at the
