Present Day

Mara woke with a start. Heart pounding, she held her breath. Had she heard a sound in real life or in her dream? Calm down, Mara. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she spotted Major asleep on his bed under the window. If the noise had actually occurred outside her dream, he would have sounded the alarm. Forcing herself to lie back down, she steadied her breathing and tried to close her eyes, but she immediately saw the men on their knees through the curtain of sleet, heard the sound of the gun going off, heard the desperate cries from one of the other men.

Tears streaming from her eyes, soaking her pillow, she finally gave up trying to go back to sleep and pushed herself up into a sitting position. She brought her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, resting her forehead on her knees. She ignored Major, who padded over to the bed and whined.

“Father God,” she whispered, her voice raw, “please help me. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

Knowing her own words wouldn’t suffice, she reached over and took her Bible off the nightstand and flicked on the lamp. She opened the Word to Psalm 35. The picture of Esther fell out. Righteous anger welled up in her heart and overrode the fear. As a defense against the pain, the horror, and the hatred, she began reading out loud. “Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul: let them be turned back and brought to confusion that devise my hurt. Let them be as chaff before the wind: and let the angel of the Lord chase them. Let their way be dark and slippery: and let the angel of the Lord persecute them.” She read the words over and over again until her heart settled, and peace returned. “And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord: it shall rejoice in His salvation.”

Thirsty, she pushed out of bed and saw that she’d managed to sleep until four this morning. Nearly a record. With Major at her heels, she left the bedroom and went into the kitchen. She’d loaded the coffee maker the night before, so it only took hitting the button to start the brewing process.

While her coffee brewed, she opened the cupboard above the refrigerator and took down a whiteboard with rubber tubing stretched across it and a length of suture. Securing the board to the counter with the suction cups on the base of it, she practiced a one-handed surgical knot, intent on keeping the muscles in her hands strong and her muscle memory intact.

As the terror from her dream faded, anger made her hand tremble, and she messed the knot up. Frustrated, she tossed the suture down. She held shaking hands against her eyes, whispering a mantra of a prayer, begging God for continued strength and protection. Major sat up and perked his ears at her, cocking his head as if listening for a command.

She poured a cup of coffee and patted the top of her thigh. He jumped up and rushed to the back door. She always let him go out first, knowing he’d sound an alarm if anyone waited out there. When he ran around the yard once and ran back to her, tongue waving, his open mouth making it look like he had a big grin, she stepped outside with him and slid the door shut behind her.

The early morning darkness enveloped her. Never quiet, the Florida wildlife sang to her—crickets chirping, tree frogs grunting, and birds already greeting the morning with a song. She settled into a chair on her porch and watched as Major made his rounds. Without that dog, she would have completely lost her courage and likely gone insane long ago. He’d given her companionship, protection, and a sense of security like nothing she could have imagined.

When he finished exploring the yard, he trotted to her and sat next to her chair. She slowly ran her hand over his head and down his back, enjoying the feel of his silky fur under her fingers. Her fingers located the scar above his right front leg, left there by the brutal assault with a knife. He whined a bit and lay his head in her lap.

Eyes closed, she thought about the message she’d received yesterday, and about the court date coming up. She spent the next thirty minutes in prayer and meditation, drawing on the strength and peace promised and provided by God.

Victor sat on the park bench and watched the pigeons fight over the piece of Danish he’d tossed their way. He smiled at the comical scene as he took a sip of coffee and leaned his head back, looking at the blue summer sky through the leaves of the tree. At seven in the morning, the heat had already started to rise. When he’d walked out of his apartment that morning, he’d anticipated stepping into cool air, not the muggy closeness he’d encountered.

Instead of his usual neighborhood jog, he went to the gym so he could work out in the air conditioning. His old trainer, Joe, would call him a little girl for choosing comfort over a good run, but he just called it old. At thirty, he’d spent a couple years longer than he probably should have in the boxing ring. Now he felt old and lackadaisical long before his time.

His favorite Bible character was King David. Knowing the hard, physically demanding life he’d led, Victor often wondered if David felt this worn out at his age. Had coming rain made his joints scream in pain? Could he feel every micro-fissure in his hands as the cold nights settled into the city?

An assortment of championship light heavyweight belts and trophies hung on the wall in his apartment. For seven years, he had dominated the world boxing arena and had, in many cases, been a household name. Now his name meant something else, something much darker.

Hearing footsteps, he looked up, and his heart skipped a beat. He sat up straighter, then realized the German shepherd on the end of the leash coming toward him wasn’t Major, and the young red-haired woman jogging by in her green spandex wasn’t Ruth.

With a wave of bitterness, he downed his coffee and stood. What he wouldn’t give to set the clock back six months and a day. The things he’d do differently—the decisions he’d make….

He wondered if Marco’s program would find her. He shook his head. He couldn’t dwell on that right now. With his father in prison, he had a business to run. With a sigh, he ambled out of the park and to his father’s office above the gym on Fifth.

Bypassing the public door, knowing the gym would be full of boxers and martial arts fighters intent on performing their daily regimens, he went up the outside stairs to the second floor, turning the lights on as he walked through the doorway. In the outer entryway, white tile floors and scarred mint green walls greeted him. A couple metal chairs sat around a dented and bent plastic table. The harsh fluorescent light flickered a bit as the ballasts warmed up.

At the inner door, he entered a numeric code on the keypad and entered his father’s sanctuary. Here, cream wallpaper accented with gold flourishes papered the walls, and Oriental rugs lay scattered over a gleaming teak wood floor. Large leather couches formed a seating area around a low glass and gold table, and a massive desk worthy of the don of the Kovalev Empire sat on the far side of the room flanked by statues of medieval Russian knights, swords drawn and ready.

Despite the illegality of most of the Kovalev business dealings, Antoly had run his company like a Wall Street corporation. Managers and assistants kept meticulous records and receipts—in code—of all business dealings.

When Victor sat in the desk, sometimes he could convince himself that everything he worked on was actually legitimate. Rarely did the real world penetrate the sanctity of this office. He wondered if that’s how his father managed to do what he did—the weapons, the women, the drugs—for so long, by shielding himself inside the meticulous code, by pretending it was truly art shipments or the stock market.

Focusing on the business at hand, he pulled the large desk chair out and settled in to work. An hour later, a burly guard with a brown leather shoulder holster over his black T-shirt brought him a cup of coffee and handed him an itinerary for the day. He noticed that he had a meeting with his father’s attorneys after lunch. With a sigh, he looked at his watch.

They would coach him on what to say when on the stand, then teach him how to sound like he hadn’t been coached. For the next week, meetings with attorneys would dominate his schedule, he knew. He had an afternoon appointment he would have to reschedule, so he began the complicated workflow of sending a message and changing the meeting to late that night.