The Witness

his eighteenth birthday.

Ambition had driven him higher until, with his brother Mikhail, he’d taken over the bratva in a merciless, bloody coup even as the Soviet Union crumbled. It was, in Sergei’s mind, a moment of opportunity and change.

He married a woman with a lovely face and a taste for finer things. She’d given him two daughters, and he’d been amazed at how deeply he’d loved them from their first breath. He’d wept when he’d held each child for the first time, overcome with joy and wonder and pride.

But when, at last, he’d held his son, there were no tears. That joy, that wonder and pride, were too deep for tears.

His children, his love and ambition for them, pushed him to emigrate to America. There he could present them with opportunities, with a richer life.

And he’d deemed it time to expand.

He’d seen his oldest child married to a lawyer, and had held his first grandchild. And wept. He’d set up his younger daughter—his artist, his dreamer—in her own gallery.

But his son, ah, his son, his businessman with a degree from the University of Chicago, there was his legacy. His boy was smart, strong, clearheaded, cool-blooded.

All the hopes and hungers of the young boy in the Moscow ghetto had been realized in the son.

He worked now in his shade garden of his Gold Coast estate, waiting for Ilya to arrive. Sergei was a hard and handsome man with shocks of white waving through his dark hair, thick black brows over onyx eyes. He kept himself rigorously fit and satisfied his wife, his mistress and the occasional whore.

His gardens were another source of pride. He had landscapers and groundskeepers, of course, but spent hours a week when he could puttering, digging in the dirt, planting some new specimen with his own hands.

If he hadn’t become a pakhan, Sergei believed he might have lived a happy, very simple life as a gardener.

In his baggy shorts, the star tattoos on his knees grubby with earth and mulch, he continued to dig as he heard his son approach.

“Chicken shit,” Sergei said. “It’s cheap, easy to come by, and it makes the plants very happy.”

Confounded, as always, by his father’s love of dirt, Ilya shook his head. “And smells like chicken shit.”

“A small price to pay. My hostas enjoy, and see there? The lungwort will bloom soon. So many secrets in the shade and shadows.”

Sergei looked up then, squinting a bit. “So. Have you found her?”

“Not yet. We will. I have a man checking at Harvard. We’ll have her name soon, and from there, we’ll have her.”

“Women lie, Ilya.”

“I don’t think she lied about this. She studies medicine there, and is unhappy. Her mother, a surgeon, here in Chicago. I believe this is also true. We’re looking for the mother.”

Ilya crouched down. “I won’t go to prison.”

“No, you won’t go to prison. Nor will Yakov. I work on other avenues as well. But I’m not pleased one of my most valued brigadiers sits now in a cell.”

“He won’t talk.”

“This doesn’t worry me. He will say nothing, as Yegor will say nothing. The American police? Musor.” He dismissed them as garbage with a flick of the wrist. “They will never break such as these. Nor would they break you if we were not able to convince the judge on the bail. But this girl, she worries me. It worries me, Ilya, that she was there and lives. It worries me that Yakov had no knowledge she and the other were there.”

“If I hadn’t been delayed, I would have been there, and would have stopped it. Then there would be no witness.”

“Communication, this was a problem. And is also been dealt with.”

“You said to keep an eye on him, Papa, to stay close to him until he could be disciplined for stealing.”

Ilya shoved up, yanked off his sunglasses. “I would have cut off his hand myself for stealing from the family. You gave him everything, but all he thinks of is more. More money, more drugs, more women, more show. My cousin. Suki.” He snarled the word for traitor. “He spits in our faces, again and again. You were good to him, Papa.”

“The son of your mother’s cousin. How could I not do my best? Still, I had hopes.”

“You took him in, him and Yakov.”

“And Yakov has proven himself worthy of that gift time and again. Alexi?” Sergei shrugged. “Chicken shit,” he said with half a smile. “Now he’ll be fertilizer. The drugs. He was weak for them. This is why I was strict with you and your sisters. Drugs are business only. For drugs—that is the root—he steals from us, betrays us and his own blood.”

“If I’d known, I’d have been there, to watch him beg like a woman. To watch him die.”

“The information on his arrest, on the deal the bastard made with the cops, only came to us that night. He had to be dealt with quickly. I sent Yakov and Yegor to check his house, to see if he was there. So perhaps he was dealt with too quickly. Mistakes were made, as the Americans say. You’ve not been one to whore with Alexi in the past. His taste was always less refined than yours.”

“I was to stay close,” Ilya repeated. “And the girl, she was intriguing. Fresh, unspoiled. Sad. A little sad. I liked her.”

“There are plenty of others. She’s already dead. Now you’ll stay for supper. It will please your mother, and me.”

“Of course.”

6

Two weeks passed, then the start of another. Elizabeth could count on one hand the number of times she’d been allowed to leave the house. And never alone.

She was never alone.

She, who’d once longed for companionship, now found the lack of solitude more confining than the four walls of her room.

She had her laptop. They’d blocked her access to e-mail and chat boards. Out of boredom and curiosity, she hacked through the blocks. Not that she planned to contact anyone, but it gave her a sense of accomplishment.

She kept that small triumph to herself.

She had nightmares, and kept them to herself as well.

They brought her books, and music CDs. She only had to ask. Devouring the popular fiction and music her mother so strongly disapproved of should have given her a sense of freedom. Instead, it only served to highlight how much she’d missed, and how little she knew of the real world.

Her mother never came.

Every morning John and Terry relieved the night shift, and every evening Bill and Lynda relieved them. Sometimes they made food; breakfast seemed to be John’s specialty. For the most part, they brought it in. Pizza or burgers, chicken or Chinese. Out of guilt—and partially out of defense—Elizabeth began to experiment in the kitchen. Recipes were just formulas, as far as she could see. The kitchen a kind of laboratory.

And in experimenting, she found an affinity. She liked the chopping and stirring, the scents, the textures.

“What’s on the menu?”

From her seat at the table, Elizabeth glanced up as John walked in. “I thought I might try this stir-fry chicken.”

“Sounds good.” He got himself coffee. “My wife does stir-fry to trick the kids into eating vegetables.”

She knew he and his wife, Maddie, had two children. A seven-year-old boy, Maxfield, named for the painter