“Yeah. And it destroyed him. He can barely even talk about her.”
“Mmm, yes. It hurts him very much.” He runs his palm over a scarf. “Tanechka was part of our gang as much as I was. She came from the same world we did. She was trained as well as any of us. She was so—scrappy, I think you would say. Fierce and wrong. Very fucking dangerous, like a white tiger. We all loved her, but what was between Viktor and her…is was so huge.”
He goes to the dresser and picks up a necklace.
“They would send her of on jobs with Viktor very often. So many jobs, those two. Tanechka and Viktor would pose as tourists. The wealthy young married couple, so much in love. Very believable, because they were in love. They could get into any hotel, any installation.” He picks up one of the boots, black with a shiny buckle. “Tanechka could make herself look like an American businesswoman or French movie star. But these clothes that Viktor has been collecting, these were her regular clothes. Very much a hoodlum, our Tanechka. Hair like starlight, Viktor would say. She loved white leather. He is collecting her clothes, Aleksio.”
I pick up the cowboy shirt, not liking this.
“He almost didn’t survive her death,” Yuri continues. “I never saw him like that—so devastated. What her death unleashed inside him was wild and dark. We were frightened for him. He lived at the bottom of a bottle. I think if it were not for his ability to become so drunk that he’d pass out, I think he would have jumped into the gorge himself. We were helping a Georgian gang at the time. We traveled back to Moscow after that, and I thought he would feel better, but he felt worse.”
My heart pounds. “He told me about it. I thought he was…improving.”
“I thought so too,” Yuri says.
Fuck. Here I’ve been chasing after Kiro and the empire we lost—and neglecting the one brother who is here.
“Some nights he would shake in my arms. His grief was so powerful he would vibrate.” Yuri looks up. “They were perfect for each other. You think your brother is extreme? It’s only because you never met Tanechka. The way she loved him and clung to him was mad and obsessive. She clung to him at the end. She clung to him even as he threw her to her death. He would talk about it. Dream about it. I’m sure he dreams about it still. It was so good when you found him. It is a good thing, a family. But now this—this is not a home, Aleksio. This is a nest he makes for a ghost.”
I suck in a breath.
Yuri fixes me with a dead serious gaze. “There is a woman in Valhalla. He thinks it’s Tanechka.”
“Hold on. He thinks he sees Tanechka in the virgin brothel? Is that what you’re telling me here?”
“He sees a ghost in there.”
“Are you shitting me? All this time?”
Yuri nods. “Did you notice on the feeds that there is a nun who prays?”
I frown, recalling the Russian Orthodox nun on the feed. Viktor had gone quiet when we first saw her. I’d thought it was about the impropriety of it. “Yeah…”
“He thinks it is Tanechka. You saw this nun, right? She prays, kneeling, her face always away from the camera. It’s true, she looks like Tanechka from the back. She has her bright blonde hair. You can see this…” He traces the edge of his cheekbone. “Her face on the side, the shape of it. Yes, she is very much like Tanechka from the back and the side, a little bit. He has not seen her face, though—”
“Wait—he thinks she’s Tanechka, and he hasn’t even seen her face?”
“Yes.”
“He thinks the nun is Tanechka based on her back.”
“He says it is her body. Her movement.”
“But it couldn’t be—”
Yuri hesitates just a moment. “I cannot see how. If you would see this gorge, the part where he threw her in…nobody would survive such a fall.”
I scrub my face. All this time I thought he was just obsessive about doing the job. “How could I not have seen this?”
Yuri shrugs. “I only just realized myself. We’ve all been working on Lazarus’s people. Making friends with the Russians over here. Taking the empire.”
“And he’s been hiding it.” I start downstairs, cowboy shirt in hand. I’m angry he would’ve kept this from me. But mostly I’m worried.
Yuri comes after me and tries to stop me. I whirl on him. “You want him killed? We can’t send him into Valhalla delusional. Chasing a ghost.”
“What are you going to do?”
I continue on down. Viktor is still asleep on the couch. Mischa’s there, and he and Tito have dug into a bag of pork rinds with the help of Derek, another of my guys. I study the nun on the screen. “She just stays like that?”
Yuri comes to join me. “Most of the time.”
“Doesn’t she fucking sleep?”
“Sleeps on her knees.”
I send Tito and Mischa into the kitchen to make coffee, and I go right for Viktor, hauling him up. He’s groggy. “Wake up! When the fuck were you going to tell me about this?”
“What?”