Sofia Keller was hired to translate a legal meeting between the Vor and the German consulate. By the end of it, she'd heard the name of a man who was supposed to be dead, and everyone in the room knew she'd heard it. The Bratva sends Alexei Morozov to clean up the loose end. He finds her in a bookshop the next morning and offers her a different job: interpreter for his family - visible, safe, and testifying against no one. Sofia says yes because she has no other choice, and because he is the only person who has ever told her the truth about what he was going to do to her. For six months she translates interrogations and watches him spare everyone he can. Then the Vor orders a hit on a witness she likes, and she lies to his face. He catches her. It turns out the name she wasn't supposed to hear was his brother's, and Alexei has been protecting him ever since. They get the brother out. Sofia and Alexei leave together. The last page is quiet, and neither of them is flinching anymore.

Roman Volkov führt seit einundzwanzig Jahren die Bratva von Philadelphia, hat auf einer Hochzeit einen Mann gettet, um dorthin zu gelangen, und hat nie die Form seines Lebens in Frage gestellt. Dann stirbt die Witwe seines Bruders an Krebs und hinterlässt eine Tochter, Mila, neunzehn Jahre alt, und ernennt Roman zu ihrem Vormund. Er will den Job nicht und weiß nicht, was er mit einem Mädchen anfangen soll, das Feldhockey spielt, Antidepressiva nimmt und nie erfahren hat, was ihr Onkel wirklich tut. Also quartiert er sie im dritten Stock seines Hauses ein, stellt einen Tutor ein und gibt ihr eine einzige Regel: Bleib drinnen, bis du einundzwanzig bist, denn ein Name in einem Testament ist ein Name auf einer Liste. Sie liest trotzdem die Post. Sie erfährt, was er tut. Sie bleibt. Neun Monate leben die beiden in einem Haus mit verschlossenem Tor und viel Schweigen, und was zwischen ihnen wächst, ist geduldig, einseitig und genau so fair, wie beide es für richtig halten. Dies ist eine Bratva-Romanze mit Altersunterschied und erzwungener Nähe, die vor einer Gerichtstür endet.

Roman Volkov has run the Philadelphia bratva for twenty-one years, killed a man at a wedding to get there, and has never once questioned the shape of his life. Then his brother's widow dies of cancer and leaves behind a daughter, Mila, nineteen, and names Roman as her guardian. He doesn't want the job and he doesn't know what to do with a girl who plays field hockey and takes antidepressants and has never been told what her uncle actually does. So he installs her on the third floor of his house, hires a tutor, and gives her one rule: stay inside until you turn twenty-one, because a name in a will is a name on a list. She reads the mail anyway. She learns what he does. She stays. For nine months the two of them live in a house with a locked gate and a great deal of silence, and what grows between them is patient, one-sided, and exactly as fair as both of them think it is. This is an age gap, forced proximity bratva romance that ends at a courthouse door.