“All paradises have gates,” Falchi said. “You’d wonder why God made Paradise with an exit if he didn’t anticipate having to use it eventually.”

“The savagery of the picture strange and alluring, Frank smeared with blood and absolutely at ease. Barbarian, primitive, visceral; if Tony had been given to myth-making, he would have wondered if there could be any more frightening god than one who was simultaneously provider and destroyer.”

“Vadim smiled. “I’m not meeting him. We’ll be friends.”Dan still didn’t say anything, just nodded, the smile still there, then turned and walked through the living room and onto the patio, all the way through the French windows. Looking out over the old orchard and the mountains when Vadim got to his side, reaching over to take Dan’s hand. Worth it. A thousand times. Any sacrifice, from the small ones to the big ones, and Dan turns his head, looking fully at him, while the smile grew. He didn’t need to say anything, didn’t have to voice the “I love you”. It was there, unsaid, yet outspoken.Fourteen years, they didn’t come cheap.”

“You made me human. I stand by that. You made me into somebody I would have wanted to become, if I'd ever thought about what I wanted to be that wasn't about a record or power or a rank or some...delusion I was chasing. If all that was gone and stripped away, the man I am, I am because of what you did, what you made me feel all those years.”

“I don’t want to talk.” Dan’s neck muscles tensed resisting Vadim’s hand.He didn’t know the words and he didn’t want to search for them. “I just want to feel.” But no, that wasn’t it. “I want to feel human.”

“Did you order it to kidnap me? Or was that its own idea?” Sergei stepped closer, fighting the urge to punch the man and then check that he was all right. None of those responses made any sense.”

“I like men with weaknesses, his father had said. I can buy them. Men without weaknesses I have to kill.”