Sasha reaches past me for a towel, and her breast brushes against my arm. She doesn’t apologize or move away. I grip the edge of the counter and force myself to keep breathing.
I’ve never wanted permanent things or let myself picture more than a few weeks ahead. But standing here with Sasha, drying dishes in a London hotel room, I can almost see it. Mornings together. Shared meals. A life that doesn’t revolve around survival. Nights in that bed behind us, her body tangled with mine.
The vision scares me more than Adrian’s threats.
In three weeks, I’m supposed to destroy this. Destroy her. Take whatever trust we’ve built and weaponize it in the cruelest way possible. The thought makes me want to put my fist through the wall. Or through Adrian’s face.
“You’re thinking too much,” Sasha observes, hanging up the dish towel.
“Occupational hazard.”
“Well, stop. Tonight’s about pretending we’re normal, remember?” She grabs my hand and pulls me toward the couch. “Come on. There’s a terrible British quiz show on that we can mock.”
So, we sit on the couch and watch terrible television, and for a few hours, I let myself pretend this is real. That I’m not lying to her about everything. That Adrian’s not waiting for daily reports on how well I’m manipulating her emotions. That this can somehow end in a way that doesn’t destroy one or both of us.
Pretending doesn’t change reality.
And reality is that I’m running out of time to figure out how to save her from what I’ve already set in motion.
One way or another, someone will die before this is over.
If I had to choose, it would be Adrian.
11
Sasha
Dmitri doesn’t waste time.
Two days after we return from London, he summons us to his office with new orders. A gallery in St. Petersburg has been flagged for suspicious transactions, and he wants us to investigate. The assignment means another trip, another hotel room, and another stretch of hours alone with Tony.
I tell myself it’s just work. The flutter in my stomach when Tony’s thigh brushes mine in the back of Dmitri’s SUV says otherwise.
Now, we’re on a train speeding north, and Tony is cheating at cards.
“You’re counting,” I accuse as I watch him lay down another winning hand.
“I’m just paying attention.” He gathers the cards and shuffles with the ease of someone who’s done this thousands of times. His hands are big, and scarred across the knuckles, and I’ve been trying not to stare at them for the past hour. “My uncle taughtme this game when I was ten. Said it would teach me to read people.”
“Did it work?”
“You tell me.” He deals another round, and the cards snap against the small table between our seats. “What am I thinking right now?”
I’mthinking that I want to climb into his lap and finish what we started in my apartment, but I keep that thought to myself.
“You’re thinking about how to win again,” I say instead.
“Wrong,” he says. “I’m thinking about your mouth.”
His gaze flicks to my lips. “You bite it when you’re focused.”
I stop immediately, and he laughs. The sound transforms his face, softening the hard edges and making him look younger, almost boyish. For a moment, I can picture him as a ten-year-old kid in Michigan, learning card games from an uncle who probably had no idea what his nephew would become.
“Tell me more about him,” I prompt. “Your uncle.”
Tony’s smile fades, but he doesn’t shut down the way he usually does when personal questions come up. “He was military. Vietnam. Came back with demons he never talked about and a drinking problem he talked about too much. But he took me in when my parents died, even though he had no idea how to raise a kid. Taught me to fix engines, shoot straight, and never trust a man who won’t look you in the eye.”
“He sounds like Boris.”
