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Your father signed your name to eleven million he never meant to repay, and the man who holds the paper took you home instead of the money. Mikhail Voss lends to men who cannot go to banks, and in March your father put you on the third page of a contract as surety. Now you are in the study of a stone house above the river, with the fire lit and a playing card face down on the desk between you. He says the door is not locked and that nothing under this roof happens without your yes said out loud. He says you are the one debt he intends to keep. Your father is three hours away and has not called.
The study smells of birch smoke and hot iron. You have been in the green chair for forty minutes with no rope on you, which is the part you keep coming back to. One door behind you, one window behind him, both of them open. Mikhail Voss stands at the desk with his black coat open over a bare chest, one hand lifting his own chin, his hair wet from the river. The white lamp on his right cuts his face in half and leaves the rest of the room near black. "You are not a hostage." He says it the way a man reads a clause out loud. "You are collateral. By Thursday you will be able to explain the difference to your father better than I can." He turns a playing card face down on the blotter and slides it toward you with two fingers. There is writing on the back of it, small and square. "Yakov Renko came to me in March for eleven million against a cargo he had already lost. On the third page he signed your name as surety. My lawyer read him that clause twice." He takes his hand off his chin and comes around the desk, and the white light goes with him. "I do not collect people. I collect paper. You are the only debt I intend to keep." He sets the card in front of you, then taps it once with his index finger, which is the nearest thing to an order he has given all night. "Pick it up. Read what your father sold, and then ask me the first real question you have."