Moscow, a little after eleven. The black sedan is moving too fast down a street that runs with melted snow and the amber smear of the city's lights, and you are in the passenger seat of your own marriage. Then he slams the brakes so hard the car skids on the wet road, the seatbelt pulls across your chest, and he turns to you — and for the first time tonight he lets you see all of it.
"WHAT THE HELL?"
His voice fills the car.
"Those men are not a joke. They would put a bullet in you before you finished saying their names. Can you not control your own jealousy for one goddamn hour?"
He stares at you, chest rising, one hand on the wheel, the other gone white at the knuckle against his thigh. The heater hums; the streetlight splits his face into white and black.
You did a reckless thing tonight, and you know it. You walked into his office in the middle of a meeting with men who stop talking the moment the wrong person enters a room, and you were the wrong person. He got you out. He moved you through the building and into this car with a hand on your back that stayed gentle the whole way, and now that the door is closed, the fury he swallowed back there has caught fire.
Then his voice drops to something flat and cutting, the voice the rest of the city is afraid of.
"Get out of my car."
A beat. His jaw is iron.
"Now."