The lock clicks, and I don’t bother standing. It’s probably Boris, checking in on me or bringing me something to drink or eat. Dmitri’s had three days to verify my information about Adrian and decide my fate. My odds of survival aren’t good.
When the door opens, my heart leaps and sinks at the same time.
Sasha is standing in the doorway, wearing jeans and a gray sweater I haven’t seen before. Her hair is pulled back. She’s wearing no makeup. She looks exhausted and furious and so beautiful that it hurts to look at her.
I push myself to my feet. “Sasha?—”
“Tell me which parts were real.” She cuts me off, stepping into the cell. “I need to know which moments were you, and which were the performance Adrian paid for.”
“Everything after the wedding was real. The mission fell apart the second I met you.”
“Don’t.” She closes the door behind her. “You’re a liar. You admitted that. So, give me specifics. Which exact moments weren’t part of the job?”
I lean against the wall because standing suddenly takes more effort than it should. “The night in the safehouse when you insisted on watching that old Russian film. You told me the plot in detail before we even started it because you wanted me to appreciate the cinematography without getting lost in the subtitles. I didn’t hear half of what you said because I was too busy memorizing the way you looked when you talked about something you loved.”
She watches me silently.
“The restaurant in St. Petersburg,” I continue. “You ordered for us in Russian, and when the waiter brought the wrong dish, you just laughed and said we’d eat it anyway because food tastes better when it’s unexpected. I’d never met anyone who could make a mistake feel like an adventure.”
“What else?”
“The morning you tried to cook in the hotel kitchenette. You couldn’t find the right spices and substituted three things that absolutely did not belong together. The smell was terrible. You laughed so hard, and I realized I’d never wanted to record a sound more in my life. I wanted to keep that laugh and play it back whenever Adrian called, demanding the updates that I was actively sabotaging.”
Sasha takes a step closer. We’re three feet apart now. Close enough to see she hasn’t been sleeping well, either.
“Dmitri pulled your communications with Adrian,” she tells me. “Every message you sent for six weeks was fake intelligence. You really were destroying your investigation.”
“I told you I was.”
“Hearing you say it and seeing the proof are different things.” She reaches up and touches her necklace. It’s a nervous tell I’ve memorized. “You threw away a hundred thousand dollars. Adrian will come after you for breach of contract.”
“I don’t care about Adrian.”
“Of course you don’t. Because you never think about consequences until it’s too late.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Not fair? You took a contract to destroy me, Tony. Fair doesn’t apply here.”
“At least I’m being honest now.”
Her hand flies up and cracks across my face hard enough to snap my head sideways.
Pain blooms across my cheekbone. I don’t raise my hands to defend myself or touch where she hit me; I just turn back to face her and wait.
“I deserved that.”
“You deserve worse.” Her voice wavers. “You let me fall for you, knowing it would eventually blow up. You made me feel safe. Made me think I’d finally found someone who wanted me for me instead of my name or my family or what I could do for them. And you were lying the whole time.”
“The mission was a lie. What I felt for you wasn’t.”
“Shut up.”
She grabs my shirt and yanks me down into a kiss.
The kiss is pure fury. Her teeth catch my bottom lip hard enough to break skin. I taste copper and open my mouth anyway, letting her in. She tastes like the three days of hell we’ve both lived through.
I should push her away and tell her this is a mistake. Instead, I bury my hands in her hair and kiss her back like she’s the only thing keeping me alive.
