Whatever.
Locations seldom excited me anymore.
The triumph of killing my target gave me satisfaction, but as I began my journey across the ocean again, plotting a strategy to find and get rid of Romanoff, I couldn’t shut off a nagging thought in the back of my mind.
Do they even miss me when I’m not around?
It seemed like such a stupid question. I didn’t have a low sense of self-esteem or Daddy issues. No Mommy issues either despite my mother dying when I was so young. I knew I was valued and wanted, loved and respected. My position in the Dubinin Dynasty was a solid one.
Yet, as I stared out the window as the plane carried me over the dark ocean in the middle of the night, I was once again restless.
This sensation of being the odd man out was wearing on me.
Envisioning my family, I saw them clearly.
My father with Gabriella, probably laughing at something Andre is learning to do now.
Alexsei busy with Misha, likely reading to him before bed.
Ivan and Raisa together and settling into their new residence with Lev playing in the background.
Then…
There was me.
Do they even think about me?
Are they all so set in their own families that no one notices when I’m gone?
I let out a deep sigh and closed my eyes, hating that these questions and this general gunky feeling were becoming a pattern. A routine. A festering hole in my chest.
It didn’t matter if they thought about me. It never used to bother me before.
It was only since noticing that agent that I felt a pull to someone. She was a stranger. She was clearly my enemy.
But until I’d realized how acutely she was paying attention to me, I hadn’t considered how long it had been since I felt like I could be the sole object of someone’s interest.
Interest? For fuck’s sake.
That woman wasn’tinterestedin me.
She was tailing me and trying to reach me for the sake of bringing me in. Nothing more, nothing less, and it would serve me well to give up these thoughts about her once and for all.
4
SADIE
Finishing a long day in the office with a workout in the gym made sense. Deskwork was a mandatory part of my career, but boy, did I loathe it. Being out in the field and actively searching for someone were what I enjoyed the most. But being out in the field and actively searching blindly were just stupid.
After Emil gave me the slip and sent me flying off to freaking Alaska instead of giving me a chance to tail him back to New York, I felt like I had nothing but dead ends to greet me. Searching online was fruitless. Informants in airports and with the NYPD were pointless.
Emil had gone back into hiding—or staying out of reach on the Dubinin properties he and his family owned. Previous experience had taught me to never expect to get close to where he called home.
How can a man who travels so often even have a sense ofhome?
After a warmup of a jog on the treadmill, which was more like child’s play with how much of a cardio junkie I was, I movedon to the free weights. At five o’clock on a Friday, this whole floor of the gym was empty. I had it all to myself, and I enjoyed the freedom to work out as much as I wanted to without having to suffer any stares, any creeps hitting on me, or any jealous coworkers taunting me into thinking I couldn’t run that hard for so long or that I couldn’t possibly bench or lift that much.
Newsflash, I can. I can do it all.
