The pet name does something awful and bright in my stomach. It’s almost as intimate as his mouth on mine. I try to keep my face as still as I can when I answer him. “Nothing.”
One eyebrow lifts, reminding me of Gavriil’s surprise earlier. Except Dominik’s expression is disbelief. “You took my phone and locked yourself in the bathroom.”
Heat crawls up my neck and forces my arms to cross over my chest. If I stand too still, he’ll smell guilt on me the way he smells gun oil. “I was checking to see if anyone called about the… about yesterday.”
“Mm.” He steps into the bathroom slowly, like a tide that knows it will reach whatever it wants to reach, eventually. “Anyone?”
“Nope,” I say too fast. “No one.”
His mouth twitches. “You’re a terrible liar,” he says. “Which is a relief.”
“Fine,” I say, because if I keep standing here, the ground will swallow me up. “I called Archer.”
Dominik’s eyes narrow, not with the rage I expected, but with something colder. “What did you say?”
“I told him the truth,” I manage. “That you were shot protecting me. That your brother gave you a week. That if he doesn’t bring back the money and tell me where the guns are, I’ll be dead soon. Or worse.”
His head tilts, thoughtful. “That last part isn’t true.”
“It could be,” I say, and the crack in my voice betrays me. “If he doesn’t fix it.”
Dominik lets the silence sit for a moment, then makes a small movement with his hand. “And? What did he say?”
I swallow. “He said he can’t. That the money’s gone. That he doesn’t know where the guns went.”
“Lies,” Dominik grunts. “Half-truths at best.”
“He said he thought I was already dead.” The sentence lands like glass shards in my throat. “After seeing the photos and then the messages stopped…”
Dominik’s eyes flick over my face like he’s reading a language only he seems to know. “He let himself think that, so he didn’t have to put in the work. It’s easier to grieve a lie than fix a mess.” He takes one step closer. Then another. “And now?”
“I told him to offer up something in two hours,” I say. “Money. The location of the guns. Both. I told him if he didn’t, I’d end up with your brother, in his cage.”
That gets a reaction. Dominik’s eyes darken as if they’re going to war with just the mere thought. Or with the words. His teeth clench tight, jaw twitching, making me want to stroke the muscle and soothe it, to place a kiss on it, especially when the exhaustion seems to suddenly weigh twice as heavily on him. “Should we be expecting Archer for dinner?” It’s his roundabout way of asking if I’m expecting a rescue.
“No. He asked me to tell him where I was, but I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I knew it would be a suicide mission.”
I pick up the phone and offer it back to Dominik. When he reaches for it, his hand grazes mine.
The touch is a jolt. He feels it too. I see it in the way his eyes change, less distance, more heat again. His thumb brushes the back of my hand once, a soft, deliberate stroke like his tongue on mine, and the breath I was about to take goes somewhere else.
“Next time,” he says, voice low, “ask me for what you want, hellcat. Don’t steal it.”
“I didn’t steal—” I stop, because yeah, I did. “I didn’t think you’d say yes.”
“You could have tried,” he says.
“You may have said no, like before when I wanted to call him,” I answer, because if I don’t push back, I know he won’t respect me. “And I had to try to do something.”
He breathes out that near-laugh I’m learning usually meansdon’t be cute with me unless you want to find out how much I like it.“I would have said yes this time,” he replies. “Because sometimes the quickest way to make a snake climb out of his hole is to throw down a stick of dynamite.”
“I told him I might be killed,” I repeat, and hear the confession in it. “I lied because I needed him afraid.”
“It wasn’t a lie,” he says. “It’s just a possibility I have no intention of letting happen.”
