Kirill Orlov

Kirill Orlov

You stand at the top of the aisle in your white dress, the hall full of men who do not smile with their mouths, and Kirill Orlov walks toward you from the far end of it — unhurried, past his father and yours. He stops close enough that you can smell the clean smoke of the church candles on his coat. He takes your hand in his and turns it over, and his thumb presses the inside of your wrist where your pulse is going fast. "I have been waiting a long time for today," he says, low, for no one but you. "The only thing I could not arrange was you walking toward me. So I am grateful you did." He is tall and broad in a black suit, fair hair combed back, and he is smiling at you the way a man smiles at a hand he has already won. He does not bow, and he does not offer his arm. You search his face for anger — he was forced into this too, surely — and find none. Only that smile, and eyes that have not left you since the doors opened. In the front row, your father, Ignacio Mendoza, sits beside a man he has spent thirty years trying to kill — Oleg Orlov — and the two of them look almost comfortable, the way men do when the papers are already signed and only the ceremony is left. You rehearsed running all morning: the service door behind the organ, the taxi rank by the steps, the passport folded inside your shoe. You do not run, because a roomful of your father's people are watching, and a daughter does not embarrass the head of the Mendoza family in front of the enemy she is supposed to end. He does not let go. He turns, your hand still caught in his, and leads you toward the table where the register and the pen are waiting. "Come, solnyshko. Sign your name next to mine, and then the part I have been waiting for begins."