Chapter 6: Mentor

Pavel hadn't changed in the five weeks since I'd last seen him.

He still had the gray crew cut, the shoulders, and a canvas jacket older than I was.

He opened the back door of the town car as if I were a customer.

Bram stopped at my side on the sidewalk.

"Who is this?" he asked, very evenly.

"The driver," I said.

"He looked at you like he knew you."

"He does. Give me five minutes."

"No."

"Bram."

He studied my face, and I watched him decide something.

"I'll be in the lobby," he said. "Five minutes, then I come out."

"Deal."

I climbed in, and Pavel shut the door and walked around to the front.

The car pulled out into traffic on Wacker Drive.

For a block neither of us talked.

I had thought about this moment for three weeks, and I still had no idea where to start.

"Your courier's arm is in a cast," Pavel said, finally.

"He pulled a gun in an elevator."

"I told him to bring you a message, kid."

"The message had a suppressor."

"It was a test."

He looked at me in the rearview mirror, and I saw the old crinkles by his eyes.

"I wanted to know if you'd gone soft in a cabin," he said.

My stomach turned over.

"You know about the cabin."

"I know everything about you."

He said it fondly.

He had said it fondly at seventeen, in a diner in Gary, with a cheeseburger he had paid for out of his own pocket.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Don't Mess with My Lethal Fiancée from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.