Chapter 177

What Johanna’s parents knew about me was that I worked with numbers; I was a businessman from a very rich family. They didn’t see me as the kind of guy who would get mud on his shoes, much less blood on his hands. I would have liked to say that I could walk thirty kilometers in the snow carrying a five-hundred-pound reindeer on my shoulders. Or that Mirko could smell a two-week-old trail and follow it as if he were hot on the heels of prey. Seeing their faces would have been epic.

“And do you also fish, by chance?”

“Getting wet is not a great idea where we live,” I responded, with a discreet smile.

“You have common sense, boy.”

Johanna smiled and went back to stirring what she had on her plate. I was missing something.

The rest of the meal was spent in more pleasant conversation about the children and the new novel Johanna was working on, which I was quite aware of because she was using me as a guinea pig. She said my judgment was more than perfect beca