About this book
She saw him kill a man on Christmas Eve. By New Year's, she'd wear his ring. Pianist Clara Bishop goes back to the old Larkspur Theatre for one thing: her late mother's Nutcracker score. Instead, under the ghost light and the stage's towering Christmas tree, she watches Lev Arkadin, the ice-cold head of Chicago's Arkadin Bratva, put a bullet in a traitor. Bratva rules say a witness doesn't leave the building. Lev has a better idea. A wife can't be forced to testify against her husband. So he proposes. She says yes, because the alternative is a grave.