“A three-iron,” she corrected, perfectly calm.“Eight strikes to the rib cage.
Two to the thighs.
I took the defensive posture on the floor, protecting the cervical spine and the solar plexus.
The fractures are clean.
Non-displaced.
Two weeks in a rib binder and I’ll be back on a rowing machine.”
“Why?”
Chloe leaned forward, resting her forearms on her knees.Her eyes—the pale hazel eyes I had watched light up over a strawberry ice cream cone when she was seven years old—were completely devoid of warmth.
“Because for twenty-two years,” she whispered, “I had to listen to you tell me that my father died in a car accident on the New Jersey Turnpike.”
The fluorescent lights hummed above us. Bzzzz.Bzzzz.
“Chloe—”
“His name was Nikolai Rostov,” she cut in, her voice slicing through the room like a razor through raw meat.“He wasn’t an insurance salesman from Newark.
