His arm curls tight around my waist, his breath warm against the back of my neck. In the darkness he asks, "Are you afraid?"
I keep my eyes open, staring at the ceiling. The answer rises like smoke. I whisper, "No."
It is a lie. I fall asleep anyway, his arm heavy across me.
Morning light pushes through the curtains, pale and cold. My phone vibrates on the bedside table. I blink at the screen, bleary, until the words sharpen into clarity. An encrypted text from a blocked number, stark against the quiet of the room.If you want the truth about your fiancé, meet me at the old bell tower. Come alone.
22
VALYA
The message lands and hangs there like a threat spoken softly. I read it once and then again.If you want the truth about your fiancé, meet me at the old bell tower. Come alone.At the top, the phone shows an unknown sender, a small closed padlock sits in the corner, and the reply field stays gray. I open the details pane and find nothing, no name, no number, no card to add, only a blank tile where a face should live.
I touch the padlock, and a help screen tells me the message is protected end-to-end. I go toSettingslike a woman checking the stove twice, scroll throughFiltersandBlocked, hunt for the seam that might explain how this slipped past our net, and meet only clean menus and closed doors. I return to the thread. The words wait. My thumb hovers, and my mouth dries. I ask myself if I should go. I must go, and still my mouth is dry.
My hands move before the fear can name itself, reaching for plainness the way a thief reaches for shadow. I know how tobe forgettable. A black windcheater that eats light, a gray cap pulled low, hair twisted to a hard knot under the hood, flat boots that keep quiet on stone, no scent. The red scarf becomes lining, not banner. I coil it under the collar where it warms and doesn't speak. The crucifix rests warm at my collarbone.
I leave the room breathing in my scent, the lamp low, the radio murmuring at a whisper, a shawl over the chair,The Book of Vowsopen to the line I have been practicing, the bath porcelain wet as if I have just washed my face. My coat stays on the peg.
I take the service stair. On the second landing, the lower post lifts his chin, and the dome camera begins its slow pan. I wait until both gazes slide away and slip into the chapel's shadow, where the lamp behind glass keeps its small moons. Yelena's careful hands have already steadied the wicks. Incense threads the half-lit corridor and climbs into my head in a way this new body refuses. I set two fingers to the doorframe for blessing and apology, then cross to the courtyard where hedges wear sugared edges and the iron gate waits like an old rule. The right hand doesn't tell the left.
No sedan idles at the curb. No shadow peels off the fence. The street offers only a plow's distant scrape and the hush that falls over brick when morning holds its tongue. I cut down alleys the house cameras don't see, past a shuttered bakery that smells of fennel and heat, past a parish with a paper star taped crooked in the window. I carry my small charity laptop in a canvas tote with paint on the straps. It is ugly enough to be invisible and clean enough to trust.
The bell tower waits where the North End forgot to finish what it started, a stack of brick with seams fretted by ice andmortar turned to powder. The old crossbeam is split and feathered, a place where pigeons once turned hours into rolling coos and the quick slap of wings, then left it to weather. The bronze is long gone. The mouth is a black ellipse, and the wind threads through and draws a note that sounds like longing.
I step inside the arch and stand beneath the broken timber. The masonry presses its chill through the wool of my coat, the wind running with it until my skin learns the patience of stone. Every childhood rule rises—never meet men who prefer corners, never go to a second location, never confuse courage with recklessness, and still I stand. I'm a Kirov daughter and a woman who knows when information will not come any other way.
I hear the scrape of a sole long before he shows. My stomach rolls once and settles. My mouth tastes like pennies and tea. He steps out from the negative space behind a pillar. Not Aleksandr. Wrong posture. This one carries his shoulders as if he learned to march on gravel. Hair close to the scalp, a line of scar down the cheek that did not heal well, a coat that looks like income spent on durability, not show. No ring. No visible gun. A bulge that could be anything. He doesn't come closer than two arm lengths. I let the crucifix warm under my palm.
"For you," he says. A Baltic Russian, consonants neat, vowels narrowed, English almost school-perfect until achhardens where it should soften. He holds out a small black drive between thumb and forefinger. Latex glove. The etiquette of people who don't plan to be remembered.
"From whom?" I ask.
"From a man who prefers you not to marry wrong." He smiles without his eyes. "And a man who loves timing."
Sergei Vetrov lives in that sentence like a wolf at the edge of a field. I don't flinch. I take the drive like a communion wafer. Steady, deliberate, no shaking. The plastic is colder than the air. I slide it into my tote.
"If you think this scares me into your church," I say, "you don't know what I have survived in mine."
He nods as if pleased I used the word church for both worlds. "Look soon," he says. "Metadata is a kind of hourglass." Then he folds back into nothing, steps placed so carefully, the grit barely moves.
I don't linger. The tower has the temper of a trap. I cut across to the little cafe that saves me when the center's heater sulks. The bell on the door rings like a coin dropped into a brass plate. The barista clocks my face and my need for a table near the outlet and pretends not to. I take the corner seat. I pull the laptop from the tote, flip the lid, kill Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and feed in the drive.
Filenames bloom, efficiency as orders:SUBJECT_V_Tail_Week1, SUBJECT_V_Tail_Week2, Comms_Transcripts_Extract, Clinic_Prenatal_Valentina.pdf, Access_Log.
My hand goes slick. I click the first folder. Telephoto shots pour out like a film of my life seen through a rifle scope. The community center loading bay, me carrying a box markedBooks. The North End charity auction, me with a paper boat of arancini, laughing at something I don't remember now. The park bench with lights netted over the branches. My coat collar up, Dmitri's profile bent toward me, the angle ofhis shoulder protective, not possessive. Every picture framed from just far enough to be plausible and just close enough to steal.
The barista drifts over with a pencil behind her ear and tilts her head toward the machine. "You need anything?" she asks, kind and brief.
"Just water, with ice," I say, giving her my best smile.
I openComms_Transcripts_Extract.Time stamps line the left margin. The language is clinical.SUBJECT V departed service door 08:32. Contact at Tremont 08:51. No unusual movement.A different hand has annotated certain lines.Note: Annex code appears again. Who is the driver?It reads like logistics, as if I'm a payload and the city is a string of waypoints.
The girl arrives. She sets a glass on a napkin and leaves me to the screen. The ice clicks against the glass, and only then do I see my hand shaking, cold climbing my wrist as heat gathers under my collar. My thumb hovers over the trackpad for a heartbeat. I clickClinic_Prenatal_Valentina.pdf.
The logo at the top belongs to a clinic that sends fire and ice down my spine. The font loads half a second late, like a blink before guilt. My name. My birthdate.Result: Positive. Blood slips from my head and pools in my chest.The report marches, cold and aloof. Bloodwork ranges. A recommendation for folate. A reminder to avoid alcohol. The file carries the shape of my body in grayscale numbers.
A second window opens on its own. A tidy list of logins scrolls past. One line glows like a confession.In-house network, West Wing access point, user tag steward, 07:14.Five minutes later.In-house network, Library access point, user tagguest.In the margin a note reads,pulled off our network.A faint white wolf sits in the corner like a maker's stamp. It wants me to blame my own house.
