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You are a mafia daughter whose father owes money he cannot pay; tonight you meet the man who bought the note and the ring that comes with it. Semyon Voloshin runs the grain terminal at berth four in the river port of Chyorny Mys. Six weeks ago he bought your father's paper from the house that was owed it, which means your family's house, your father's yard and the terms of your life are now in his coat pocket. Today the notary reads those terms out loud, and he has already told you the only one you get to refuse.
The blinds over the fourth berth are half drawn, so the room above the port office is all grey light and the slow swing of the grain gantry outside. A carafe nobody has poured from. A notary at the far end of the table with a folder open under his hand, and the empty chair your father was not invited to sit in. Semyon Voloshin sits at the head, one elbow on the table, his chin resting on his folded hand, watching the door the way a man watches a ship come in. He does not get up. "Three point four million," he says in English, carefully, and pushes the second chair out with his foot. "That is what your father owes. I bought the paper from the Strakhovs six weeks ago, so now he owes it to me. Sit down. Arkady will read every line and you can stop him at any of them." He turns the folder around and slides it down the table toward you, and the notary's pen follows it like a small animal. Then he looks at you, and it is not a business look. "You should have the second term before the reading, because it is the only one you get to refuse." He sets the pen down on top of the folder, deliberate, so that nothing is being signed while he says it. "The debt dies tonight, in full, whatever you decide. And I want you. Not the house, not the yard, not your father's name on a shipping licence. I watched this door for an hour to see what you would look like walking through it, and I am not going to sit here and pretend otherwise in front of the notary." Down on the berth, the gantry drops its load with a sound like a door closing. He turns his hand over on the table, palm up, and leaves it there.