The Siren's Touch. Amber Belldene

      The lawyer watched him set the glass back down on his desk and filled his mouth with air behind closed lips. The coward wouldn’t meet his eye.

      Beneath his desk, Gregor squeezed his fists tight. He recognized the look, the one he’d first seen on his doctor’s face.

      Pity. Infuriating pity.

      He raged, not at the cancer, but at the cowards who couldn’t stare death in the eye. His death, for that matter, not even their own.

      He pushed back his chair and stood. “If there’s nothing else.”

      “Yes, yes. I’ll take care of everything. Will you tell Dmitri in advance that you’ve left it all to him?” The man pulled at his cuffs, as if they weren’t already white and creaseless and falling the perfect distance past his coat sleeves.

      Gregor wanted to shout, but it was rarely an effective strategy. He forced calm into his voice. “Yes. He needs to be prepared to take over the business.”

      “Of course. I hadn’t thought of that.”

      Gregor wrapped his fingers around a ballpoint pen and squeezed. Why on earth was he paying a small fortune to a fool who hadn’t thought of that? Probably because he was considered the best estate lawyer in Kiev, even if he was afraid of death. And because Gregor’s estate planning required all kinds of contingencies, ever since his nephew had accidentally killed a girl and followed the footsteps of his alcoholic father. Dmitri’s month-long bender had landed him in the drunk tank twice, robbed him of nearly twenty pounds, and God knew how many years of future good health.

      The lawyer closed the door very carefully, as if a loud noise might do Gregor in then and there. Just to prove it wouldn’t, he threw his glass at the door, where it banged and then fell onto the thick Turkish rug.

      His computer dinged, notifying him of a new message. He didn’t have to see it to know it would be from Makar, the sly old weasel. For years now, that traitor had been emailing him with chess plays like clockwork. Gregor greeted them with a grudging welcome. He never won, and he despised his opponent, but there was a certain comfort in the ritual.

      For almost a decade, not one computer expert had been able to track down Makar’s location via the emails—something about encryption like the layers of an onion—until last week, when an unencrypted email had come through. The technology experts thought Makar had accidentally hopped onto a neighbor’s wireless network. Gregor was suspicious his old enemy would be so careless. But with that IP address, they had traced the location of his Internet usage to a square block in San Francisco.

      The lead on Makar’s location had sobered Dmitri up from his Ivan impersonation. Gregor hadn’t wanted him to go, but the vengeance had focused Dmitri—given him something to live for again, and Gregor needed him alive.

      Of course, Gregor himself would find a certain amount of satisfaction in Makar’s death. As long as Dmitri made a clean kill and came home without dragging up too many skeletons of the past.

      Gregor didn’t have time for those old bones, since his own had betrayed him, turning cancerous and eating him alive. He barely had enough time to ensure the future of the family business, and his nephew. And in the handful of weeks his doctors predicted he had left, those were his top priorities

      Except there was always enough time to play against Makar. Once Dmitri killed the son of a bitch, Gregor would miss their games right up until the moment he joined that bastard in hell.

      He opened the email and read its customary three characters—BF4—to indicate the movement of his bishop. But the message contained an unprecedented second line—“Dmitri looks just like his father.”

      Gregor’s eyes blurred. That was not good.

      If Dmitri had succeeded, Boris would never have lived to email about it. Something had gone wrong.

      Damn it. If Dmitri asked Boris the wrong questions, the boy would learn things he didn’t need to know, things that might keep him from coming back to Kiev. Ever.

      And that meant everything Gregor had worked for—the business he’d built for his family—would be lost.

      Gregor sent Dmitri a text. “Boris knows you’ve found him.”

      Minutes stretched out long and silent as Gregor waited for Dmitri’s reply, watching the sparse headlights travel through Kiev’s city center below.