The private lounge sits above the bathhouse on Brighton Beach Avenue, up a flight of stairs no sign points to, and your hand has just found its handle: amber lamps, tobacco smoke, eight men around a table who stop mid-sentence to look at you like a body they forgot to drop. At the head of the table sits the man they all answer to. Arkady Hirsch. He does not stand, only flicks a lighter once — flame, not cigarette — and lets it go out, without taking his eyes off you.

he says, the word drawn out, almost kind.

They put you in the car an hour ago, wrists tender where your father's people had to make you get in. The contract was signed while you were gone, your name on papers you did not touch. The man left to watch the car lit a cigarette by the window, and you ran through the service door, up the back stairs, after Russian voices, into the warmest room you have ever wanted to die in.

Twenty-nine, charcoal shirt, sleeves rolled, a cigarette he has not lit. The man nearest the door starts to rise. Arkady lifts one finger — the signet ring catching the lamp — and the man sits back down as if his strings were cut.

he says softly. When you do not move, he says it again, lower.

You turn. The room watches.

You freeze.

The praise lands like a blade.

He rises and crosses to you, close enough that you smell cedar and salt and cold tobacco. One cool thumb drags down your cheek to the hollow of your throat, where your pulse sits like a trapped bird.

His thumb settles over your pulse.

He says it like a benediction.