The chair they sat her in was worth more than her rent.
Aria noticed things like that — irrelevant details that lodged themselves in her brain during crises because her brain apparently preferred interior design analysis to processing mortal terror. The chair was Italian leather, black, old. The desk was mahogany, cleared of everything except a single folder and a glass of water she hadn't been offered.
The Pakhan stood at the window with his back to her.
The large one — Dmitri, she'd heard someone say — leaned against the wall, watching her with the comfortable curiosity of someone who'd brought home a stray and wasn't sure if it was going to bite.
"Name," the Pakhan said. Still facing the window.
"Aria Ferretti."
"Italian."
"My grandparents were from Naples. I'm —" She stopped herself from saying very normal and boring and not worth the trouble, because she suspected it wasn't persuasive. "Yes."
"What did you see?"
She considered lying. Dismissed it immediately — he'd know, and knowing she'd lied would be worse than whatever she'd actually seen. "Enough," she said. "Not everything. I wasn't — I wasn't trying to see anything. I was cutting through. I have the world's worst sense of self-preservation, it's a documented personal flaw —"
"What do you study?"
The shift in topic was so abrupt she blinked. "Literature. Third year."
He turned from the window then, and she made herself hold his gaze because looking away felt like the worst possible move and also because — and she was choosing not to examine this — his eyes were extraordinary in a way that had nothing to do with warmth and everything to do with depth.
"Do you live alone?" he asked.
"With my brother. Marco. He's —" She stopped. Something about giving him information felt dangerous. "He's a worrier. He'll notice if I don't come home."
"He'll be told you were delayed."
"Oh, we're already at the stage where you're managing my brother's expectations. That's — that's efficient."
Dmitri laughed. He tried to make it a cough. It was not convincing.
Aleksei's expression didn't change. "You're not afraid," he said. It wasn't quite a question.
"I'm extremely afraid," Aria said honestly. "But I've found that when you're afraid of something you can't run from, acting afraid mostly just makes it worse. So." She folded her hands in her lap. "Here we are."
He studied her for a long moment with those glacier eyes, and she had the disorienting sensation of being read — of someone actually seeing her, efficiently and completely, in a way most people never bothered to.
"You have a choice," he said at last.
She waited.
"You forget tonight. You walked home a different way, you saw nothing, this building doesn't exist. In exchange, you are unharmed, your brother is unharmed, and your life continues exactly as it was." He paused. "Or you don't forget. In which case I have a problem, and I resolve my problems." His voice was flat. Not cruel — factual, which was somehow worse.
Aria breathed. "Option one," she said. "Obviously. I'm not suicidal." A beat. "I'm also not an idiot, so I want you to know that I genuinely mean it. I didn't see anything useful. I don't know who you are. I have a thesis to write and zero interest in organized crime." A pause. "No offense."
"None taken."
She stood, because sitting felt like accepting her own smallness. "Can I go?"
He looked at her for three more seconds — she counted — and then said: "Dmitri."
Dmitri straightened and nodded at the door. "I'll take you to the street."
