“Don’t be ridiculous,” I mutter to myself. I sink into the chair beside the bed and fold my hands in my lap to keep them from making any bad decisions. The clock on the nightstand ticks with the rhythm of my heartbeat.
In the daylight, I finally notice that there’s a phone on the nightstand charging. Not mine, which I haven’t seen since I dropped it on the street, but Dominik’s. Face down, as if I won’t be as tempted to use it. I stare at it the way you look at cliffs, curious, terrified, but unable to step away.
If I call Archer, I could possibly make things worse. If I don’t call him, everythingwilldefinitely get worse for me and for Dominik.
Going over, I quietly slide the phone toward me with two fingers, like it might bite, until the plug pulls free. The glass is cool underneath my thumb. The screen wakes at my touch and throws up a numerical pad that feels like a dare.
“Shit,” I whisper, but my body doesn’t listen well when fear is shouting. I think of the elevator code, the quick sure press of Dominik’s fingers on the panel outside the penthouse door.
I try 0-3-1-7. The screen slides open. Of course he reused the code. Men like Dominik don’t expect anyone to touch their phones.
Relief floods me so fast my eyes sting. It isn’t just that I guessed right; it’s that for a moment, after confronting Gavriil, I feel capable, like I can take on any problem and succeed.
The second feeling that hits me is guilt, sharp and mean, because every secret on this phone belongs to a man who’s bled for me.
The home screen is as sparse as the rest of Dominik’s life. Messages pinned at the top with names that aren’t real names. A folder that probably isn’t photographs labeled “receipts.” I don’t touch anything else. I slide to the calls and there it is, Archer’s number in the recent message list.
I tap on the contact before I can make a better decision. The phone rings once. Twice. Three times. My pulse counts with it.
On the fourth, a voice breathes into my ear, raw and small. “Huh.You’re still alive, Morozov?”
I swallow so hard it hurts my throat almost as much as his smug words hurt my heart. “Archer.”
The sound he makes is half laugh, half sob. “Alina? Jesus. I thought—” A long pause stretches, thick with what sounds a lot like guilt. “I thought you were dead!”
“You almost made it happen at the warehouse,” I say, and hear the jagged edge in my own voice.
“You were there? Shit! I didn’t mean?—”
“Stop.” I walk into the bathroom and close the door because I need to talk fast, before Dominik wakes up. “Listen to me, Archer. There’s no more time for your excuses.” I keep my voice low; my eyes keep flicking to the door, waiting, knowing he’ll come find me. That’s what he does. “They gave him a week,” I say. “Dominik promised he’d bring the money and the guns back to his brother in seven days. There are five left. Less. He’s hurt, Archer. He was shot last night because of you.”
Silence hums in my ear, thick and aggravating. “How bad?—”
“He’ll live,” I snap. “But he took a bullet because he put his body over mine. If he dies, it’s on you. If I die, it’s on you. Are you listening to me?”
“I hear you,” he whispers. “I hear you, Alina, I do, but you don’t?—”
“Don’t tell me what I don’t know or don’t understand,” I bite out. “Tell me where the money is. Tell me where the guns are. Tell me how to fix this problem you made before it gets any worse for us both!”
“I can’t,” he says, and the two words go through me like a blade. “I don’t have the money. The guns aren’t mine. I sold them. They’ve probably been moved again. They’ll keep moving now.”
“You sold them to those bikers,” I say, and try to keep my voice from shaking. “The ones who came yesterday. They almost killed us all.”
“Not them,” he says too fast, then backtracks. “Some of them. Not all. I—look, it’s bigger than I thought, okay? I thought I could flip the inventory, make a cut, pay the debt I owed someone else, and be done. But once I moved the first batch, they wanted more, and the second buyer wasn’t who I thought, and the cash I got was short because they skimmed and threatened, and I?—”
“You gambled,” I say flatly. “With guns and men andwith my life.”
“I didn’t know you’d get dragged into this!” he pleads. “I never wanted that. And when you did… I saw the photos, then the messages stopped. I thought they had already killed you. If I’d known you were alive, I would have?—”
“You would have what?” I ask, because cruelty seems easier than hurt. “Not sent a gang of bikers to shoot at me?”
Archer goes quiet. When he speaks again, he sounds older than he is, like this ordeal has put years on him. “I thought youwere dead,” he says again, very softly. “I thought I’d already killed you. And I didn’t send them! They made me tell them?—”
“Did they make you stay away too?” I ask. “Is it easier being a coward if youthinkthe worst has already happened?”
He sucks in a breath, as if my words landed like a sucker punch. Good. I want them to hurt now that he’s upended my life. “Where are you, Alina?”
I look toward the bedroom and the man sleeping in it. “Somewhere that keeps me unharmed for now,” I say. “That won’t last if you don’t fix the mess you made.”
