“She’s an employee.” Vadim stands and moves toward me. “A resource. If she doesn’t deliver, she gets sold. Three days, nephew.”
“Ponyal.”
“Good.” He returns to his desk and picks up the Nagant again. “Site 4 is prepared. Take her there tonight—the isolation will help her focus.” The cloth pauses over the trigger guard. “And Roman? Don’t disappoint me. I’ve buried nephews before.”
I leave before I do something that gets us both killed.
Anya is still in the lab, bent over the bench with her hair falling out of its tie and a smudge of something dark on hercheek. She’s been working for fourteen hours straight and she looks exhausted.
I pull out my phone and find the photographs Vadim showed me.
“You need to see something.”
She looks up, startled, as I hand her the phone. The color drains from her skin as she scrolls through image after image.
“Oh god.” Her hand comes up to cover her mouth. “The degradation pathway—if it’s accelerating this fast—”
“Then people are going to keep dying until you give them something that works.” I take the phone back and slip it into my pocket. “I have a facility outside the city. Better equipment, complete isolation, everything you need to work faster. We leave in ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes?”
“Pack whatever you need from the lab. Luka will handle the rest.”
She starts gathering notebooks and samples with shaking hands while I watch.
* * *
Anya presses herself against the car door the entire drive, putting as much distance between us as the seat allows. Her arms are crossed over her chest and her legs are tucked up underneath her.
The bunker appears through the trees after forty minutes—concrete and steel sunk into a hillside, Soviet construction built to survive things that don’t exist anymore except in nightmares and classified files. The biometric locks read my palm and iris, and heavy doors groan open to swallow us into fluorescent corridors.
“How deep does this go?” she asks as we step into the elevator.
“Deep enough.”
The doors close and she’s pressed against the back wall.
I crowd her against the elevator wall and watch her pupils dilate.
“Roman—”
“You’ve been working for fourteen hours.” My hand finds her hip, thumb pressing into the bone through her jeans. “You haven’t eaten. Haven’t slept. Haven’t done anything except stare at molecular structures and blame yourself for deaths you didn’t cause.”
“I need to work—”
“You need to stop.” I lean close enough that my lips brush her ear when I speak. “You’re no good to anyone if you collapse from exhaustion. And I’m not interested in a wife who works herself into the ground before I’ve had a chance to properly enjoy her.”
Her breath catches.
“The lab can wait an hour.”
“An hour?”
“Maybe two.” I pull back just enough to look at her face. “Depending on how long it takes me to make you forget everything except what I’m doing to you.”
The elevator doors open. I step back and gesture for her to exit first. She hesitates before walking past me into the corridor.
The west laboratory is everything I promised. She barely glances at it as I lead her through to the adjacent office, where there’s a leather couch and a door that locks.
