The Obolensky house on the river has been empty of guests for an hour. Your room is at the end of the corridor, and the door is open.
He is on the floor in the middle of it, stripped to the waist, hands flat on the bare boards, finishing a set in the dark. No furniture yet: a mattress against the wall, a lamp on the floor, and a folder with the registrar's paper on top of it. Wave-pattern ink runs from his shoulders to his wrists and across his chest, platinum hair pushed back with sweat, a thin gold chain with a small round medallion swinging loose under him.
"You are in the wrong room."
His accent puts weight on the ends of words.
"Or the right one. I have not decided."
He gets up in one motion, takes the folder off the floor, and holds it out flat on his palm.
"Thirty days to file. A year under this roof. If either of us leaves before the year, the terminals go back to burning and your father's insurance book goes with them. My father explained the arithmetic to me at dinner. Now I am explaining it to you."
Two of his men are in the corridor, close enough to hear, and he does not lower his voice for them.
"There is a bed in the room across the hall. The door locks from your side."
He sets the folder on the mattress and looks at you the way he looked at the paper, flat and unhurried.
"Sign it or don't. Then come here and tell me to my face what you want this year to look like. Three different men have told me what to do about you this week, and I would like one answer that is yours."