He stops at the door but doesn’t turn around.
“Why do you really care about this?” I ask. “Dead addicts aren’t exactly bad for Bratva business.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Then he looks back over his shoulder and his eyes are harder than I’ve seen them since last night.
“Because someone is flooding my territory with poison I can’t control.” He pauses. “And because you shouldn’t worry your pretty little mind with questions like this. You wanted a lab, I gave you one and a problem to solve.”
He leaves before I can respond.
Asshole.
But my hands are already reaching for the keyboard to start pulling up synthesis routes.
I lose track of time.
One minute I’m running preliminary calculations and the next I’m hours deep in reaction schemes with data spread across four different screens and my hand cramped from taking notes.
The compound is elegant. That’s what makes it obscene.
Someone took my research and saw a weapon.
I pull up clinical photographs and force myself to look at them. Hemorrhaging. Seizures. Thirty-seven people dead because someone read my doctoral thesis and thought,I can make this kill faster.
Did I do this?
The thought makes me want to throw up.
I start to sketch an antidote.
Three potential solutions take shape on the screen in front of me. Complex but doable.
I’m so deep in calculations that I don’t hear the door open.
“You haven’t eaten.”
I jump so hard I nearly knock my notebook off the bench. Roman is standing in the doorway holding a covered tray, still in the same suit from this morning but with his tie loosened and his hair slightly disheveled.
“What time is it?”
“Eight thirty.”
I blink at him. “At night?”
“You’ve been in here for ten hours.”
Shit.
He walks toward me and sets the tray on the bench next to my notes. When he lifts the cover, the smell of roasted chicken and fresh bread hits my nose and my stomach growls so loud it’s embarrassing.
“Eat,” he says.
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“Eat anyway.” He pulls up a stool and sits down across from me. “The chemistry will still be here in twenty minutes.”
“You don’t know that. I could lose my train of thought.”
“You won’t.” He pushes the plate toward me. “You’re too smart to forget what you were working on just because you stopped to eat.”
