CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
IRINA VOLKOV The financial trail was not a simple wall. Every account I traced dissolved into another shell. The man was better than good. I pushed back from the desk at two in the morning, rubbed my eyes, and gave up for the night. The study called me the way it always did when I needed to think without thinking — the quiet of it, the books, the lamp that produced exactly the right quality of amber light for reading. I'd been coming here most nights for the past week and a half. My room was closer but the study was where I went anyway. I found the Dostoevsky I'd been working through and curled into the corner of the sofa, feet tucked beneath me. I was three pages from the end when the door opened. Nikolai. Still dressed, which meant he hadn't tried to sleep yet. He stood in the door
- Writer
