Page 30 of Sin Wager
"No, it doesn't." She stops in front of the State Historical Museum, studying the red brick façade. "You must think I'm foolish, living so close to all this and never taking the time to appreciate it."
"I think you're practical. Tourism doesn't pay medical bills."
She nods, her expression growing distant. "Especially not when your brother has cancer and the treatments cost more than your father makes in six months."
The admission comes out quietly, matter-of-fact, as if she's simply stating the weather. But I can hear the weight behind it, the exhaustion of carrying a burden too heavy for one person.
"That's why you work so much."
"That's why I do a lot of things." She turns away from the museum, and I see her straightening her shoulders, pushing the vulnerability back down where it can't hurt her. "But today isn't about that. Today is about Red Square and lunch with a view."
I could push now, use her moment of openness to dig deeper into what she knows about the betting operation. But there's something in her expression that makes me hold back. She looks tired, worn thin by responsibilities that should be shared but aren't.
"Come on," I say instead. "Let's get lunch."
I lead her to a restaurant overlooking the Kremlin walls, a place where the tables are spaced far enough apart for private conversation and the waitstaff knows not to linger. Vera settles into her chair and stares out the window at the fortress that has dominated Russian politics for centuries.
"It's beautiful," she says. "Intimidating, but beautiful."
"Power usually is."
"Is that what attracts you to it?"
The question catches me off guard. "What makes you think I'm attracted to power?"
"The way you move through the world. The way people defer to you at the track. The way you carry yourself." She turns from the window to look at me directly. "You're used to being in control."
"Control is survival."
"For some people. Others survive by adapting."
"Is that what you do? Adapt?"
"I try to."
There's something in her tone that suggests adaptation hasn't been easy for her. I file that observation away with all the others I've been collecting about Vera Kovalenko—the way she flinches when people raise their voices, the careful way she counts money before spending it, the protective instinct that flares whenever her family is mentioned.
The waiter brings wine and takes our order. Vera chooses the least expensive items on the menu despite my insistence that cost isn't a concern. Old habits die hard.
I shift the conversation to the history of the buildings around us, the politics that shaped this part of the city, the stories that accumulate in places where power has lived for centuries.
She relaxes as we talk, her shoulders losing their defensive set. By the time our food arrives, she's laughing at my dry observations about Russian bureaucracy and asking questions about the oligarchs who built empires from the chaos of the nineties.
"You sound like you know them personally," she says over her salmon.
"Some of them."
"Are they as ruthless as people say?"
"More so. The ones who survived the transition were the ones willing to do whatever it took to win."
"And you? Are you willing to do whatever it takes?"
Another direct question, another moment where she's trying to understand who I really am beneath the expensive clothes and careful manners. I meet her gaze and hold it.
"When it comes to protecting what's mine, yes."
"What's yours?"
