Nadia Sokolova

Raised on noir films, opera, and her grandmother's stories of the old country, Nadia writes the Bratva and Cosa Nostra as modern mythology — kingdoms of loyalty and blood where the most lethal man alive meets the one thing he will not gamble. She is emphatic that the danger points outward, never at the heroine: the fantasy is a woman who walks into the fire and walks out owning it. A rule is taped above her desk: he can burn the world down for her; he never lays a hand on her against her will.