Nina had a backup scheme: if their business plan was turned down by the company’s bank, they could take the plan to some other bank in the hope of finding more professional and reasonable creditors there. Once they estimated the prospects of the business, the reasonable creditors in the other bank would hopefully give the company a long-term loan so that it could pay off its short-term debt, but then the reasonable creditors would certainly try to take over the company or at least enter it as co-owners. Nina thought that her father should agree to this last alternative – on the condition, of course, that he retained the control of the company.

However, life showed again that it always had surprises in store capable of upsetting the plans and calculations of ordinary people.

One Saturday, as usual, Nina and her father were alone in the company – Yevgeniy Borisovich sitting in his office, and Nina, over her papers, in the reception room. Suddenly, the door opened, and three men came in. One was of medium height, lean, dressed in a good overcoat, while the other two were musclemen, each of the shape and size of a wardrobe, wearing leather jackets. The lean one cast a sliding glance at Nina, said something to the musclemen and walked on into the office of Yevgeniy Borisovich leaving his companions behind in the reception. Nina knew that her father was not expecting anyone. She sprung up from her table meaning to find out what the matter was, but one of the musclemen raised a shovel-like hand: “Sit.” Nina was thinking frantically – what was that, a robbery? Those two were clearly criminal characters. But her father did not keep any money in the office – what was there to steal?

Nina calmed down a little when she heard voices coming from her father’s office – it sounded like a normal conversation, not an assault. “All right, maybe they are some odd clients,” she thought. “I wish they placed an order that could make us some quick money. If they do, then let them be demons from hell.” She returned to her papers but could not concentrate on them – she kept pricking up her ears for the voices coming from behind the door, trying to make out what was going on. One of the two gorillas lowered onto a chair beside Nina, making it squeak pitifully. The man grinned at Nina and uttered, “Ghy-y-y…” Nina had clearly caught his eye. Dragging the massive chair with him, he moved up closer to her intending to start active flirtation. However, the other one – apparently, he was the senior of the two – dropped curtly, “Cut it out, you.” The romantically disposed thug dulled at once, moved aside, fished out a comic magazine from his pocket and got absorbed in it.

Afterwards, Nina made her father recount in every detail the conversation that he had had with his unexpected visitor.

It was rather a young man dressed in expensive, though ill-assorted clothes. There were no scars on his face, his hands were not covered in tattoos, and he smelled of French cologne rather than prison close-stool, but anyone who happened to be near him thought momentarily of something horrible and criminal, and had a chill running down their spine.

The gangster took a chair beside the desk of Nina’s father and then kept silent for a while. Looking around the office, he pulled a cigarette case from his pocket, extracted an unusual brown cigarette with a twisted tip, and lit it. A strange-smelling smoke floated about the room.

At last the gangster looked at Nina’s father. The man had foul eyes – sick and insane, they were jumping all the time, unable to focus on anything. However, he saw and noticed everything he meant to.

Unable to bear it any longer, Nina’s father rose from his chair.

“Be so kind as to tell me what…”

The other man waved the hand that held the cigarette.

“Sit. Don’t fuss.”

Nina’s father obeyed, as anyone would in his place. When actors play gangsters in movies, they shout or speak in unnaturally hoarse voices, use obscene language and make scary faces trying to be convincing. However, in real life, those who actually kill people as if it is ordinary work do not need shouting or cursing to make impression. The visitor of Yevgeniy Borisovich did not shout.

“Come on, sing,” he said quietly. A few words like ‘sing’ were the only slang he used – otherwise, he spoke an almost correct language.

“Wh-what do you mean?” uttered Nina’s father with difficulty.

“It’s you who was under Simonyan here, right?” asked the visitor.

Yevgeniy Borisovich assumed a dignified air. “I am the director of the company.”

“Yeah, that,” nodded the other.

The visitor drew on his cigarette and asked, “Do you know who I am?”

Nina’s father shook his head emphatically.

“You’ve been lucky,” said the gangster. “But your luck is over.”

“Wh-what do you mean?” Nina’s father asked again.

“Your buddy Simonyan owed money to some serious people. And he ditched it, rat.”

“But… He got killed,” mumbled Yevgeniy Borisovich.

“Yeah, that’s what I say – he ditched it. Some sly son of a bitch, he was. Come on, tell me about this racket of yours. Think how you’re going to pay.”

Nina’s father was paralyzed by fear. Afterwards, he asked himself why he had been so scared, and whether he could have behaved in a different way – and admitted to himself that if that conversation had happened again, he would have been just as crushed. Yevgeniy Borisovich Kisel faced a real, big predator in his office, himself being a sheep in comparison, and there was no changing that.

Nina’s father was about to say that he owned the company now, but bit his tongue. To the gangster, he was a Simonyan’s man, period. After some meaningless mumbling, Yevgeniy Borisovich outlined the situation. Simonyan had drained the company dry, there was no money left in it – worse still, they were up to their ears in debt to the bank and actually in for bankruptcy.

“You’re not lying to me, eh?” asked the gangster and looked into the eyes of Nina’s father which made the older man’s heart miss a few beats. “You’re not, I can see it. Damn Simonyan…”

The gangster crushed his cigarette discontentedly on the ash-tray.

“What bank is that?” he asked.

Yevgeniy Borisovich named the bank.

“Yeah, I know the joint,” said the man. “I’ll go have some face time with them so they get off your back. And you work, dude. Get stuck in, earn the cash. You’ll have to cough it up anyways, you dig?”

“I’ll send along an accountant,” he added. “But that’s just for looks. You’re not going to jump me like Simonyan, eh? … Simonyan told me you’re kind of a family man, right? It’s not for you to go jumping…”

The visitor rose and headed out, but paused in the doorway.

“The one in the reception – your daughter, eh? Looks like you.”

Nina’s father gulped, his fists clenched.

“All right, relax. Nobody’s going to touch her. You’re under me now, and I don’t believe in hurting my people,” the gangster said almost tenderly and walked out.

The next day an accountant sent down by the gangsters arrived. His name was Samuil Yakovlevich. As soon as he made Nina and her father’s acquaintance, he announced, “I can see that you are good people, so I’m telling you like you were my own family – don’t trust me. The gangs… – I mean, those kind gentlemen have me on the hook, so I’ll be reporting everything to them, may you forgive me for that. Let me ask you – who can be trusted, anyway? I’ve lived sixty years in this world, and I’m telling you – you cannot trust anyone, not even yourself.”

He was a talkative type, and for any occasion he had a saying, a story, or an anecdote, but whenever Nina’s father asked him about his criminal patrons, the accountant clammed up and shrank. He had clearly been frightened out of his wits, once and for all. Only much later, in a moment of candor, he said to Nina’s father: “You want to know what can make an old Jew slave to bandits? Children, what else? Arkasha, my only boy. The young ones are all impatient – they want everything, and they want it now. Arkadiy got mixed up with the wrong people, ran into debt, and here I am…” He sighed despondently. “We really should leave – we have relations in… no, I’m not telling you in what country. But who’s going to let us out? Here, Simonyan wanted to leave, too.”

With all that, he was an excellent accountant, and when he was not telling anecdotes or drinking tea with marshmallow sticks which he was very fond of, he would give Nina and her father very useful advice. His mission though was to keep an eye on the company’s affairs and report everything to the chief gangster whose name turned out to be Mikhail Antonovich, or, among his own crowd, Misha Permyak. Apparently, Samuil Yakovlevich had reported the state of things truthfully, since Misha Permyak paid no more visits to the company and visited the bank instead. That became apparent when Nina’s father had a call from the bank and was summoned to a conference, which had never happened before. Yevgeniy Borisovich was received by the head of the industrial credit department. Averting his eyes, the banker said that it had been decided to restructure two of the company’s short-term loans which were nearly due by replacing them with long term debt, and handed Nina’s father papers for signing.

That was a princely gift. The company received the necessary breathing space, and with it came a hope for survival. However, instead of joy, the company was plunged in depression. Nina’s father had never been able to recover from the fear that he had experienced during Misha Permyak’s visit, and the position he was in would not let him forget anything. After he had been for a short while the boss of his own, although nearly bankrupt, company, he was now a gangsters’ puppet who was allowed to work only for the purpose of bringing money to the thugs.

Nina’s father was constantly irritable and depressed. Even his universal remedy for all sorrows, work, did not help. He alternated between fits of frantic activity when he would snatch at any job, and depression when he locked himself up in his office for whole days refusing to see anyone. When that happened, Nina used any truth or lie as an excuse to take a day off at her own job to spend it in the company office from morning till night taking on herself more and more management duties. That caused fierce arguments between her and her father. On the day following the gangsters’ visit Yevgeniy Borisovich declared that she must not come anywhere near the company ever again. “You don’t understand what those bastards are capable of,” he told her. “I’ll never forgive myself if you get mixed up in this.” Nina protested that it was all the same now – it was pointless for her to hide as the gangsters had already seen her, knew who she was, and were capable of finding her anywhere if they meant to. Although her father never agreed with her on that, Nina kept coming to the office almost daily to delve into the company’s affairs.

The worst of it was that Nina’s father seemed to have taken to drink again. Nina had not seen him actually drunk – she had only traced alcohol on his breath a couple of times – but she observed the same vacant, lackluster expression on his face as he had a few years before when, workless, he was sitting in his kitchen getting drunk for whole days. Nina was no longer a young, helpless student girl, and supposedly could be helpful to her father in many ways, but the outcome was the same.

Half a year passed that way. With all the problems that the company was having, the project works were going on according to plan, but there was still no money in the till.

One day, the door opened again and Misha Permyak with two bodyguards came in. The bodyguards were not the same but very much like those that had accompanied the chief gangster the first time. In the same disciplined manner, they stayed behind in the reception room while Misha walked into the office of Nina’s father. This time Misha told Yevgeniy Borisovich to call in Samuil Yakovlevich and Nina. Yevgeniy Borisovich opened his mouth to protest that Nina had nothing to do with it, and there was no point in getting her involved, but when he met with Misha’s gaze, he shut up and obeyed.

Misha took the same chair, lit the same kind of cigarette and glanced around those present. This time though, he did not say “Sing”, but simply nodded at Samuil Yakovlevich. The accountant started speaking hurriedly – pouring out figures, dates and accounting terms – eager to provide the gangster with a full picture of the current situation. Misha listened silently for a few minutes, and then motioned to the old man to stop.

Suddenly, Misha glanced at Nina – looked her straight in the eye. His own eyes were totally insane; there was nothing human left in them.

“You,” he said.

Seized with fear, Nina could not utter a word.