“I’ll be resting. I have an incentive to heal as fast as possible, don’t I?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer his rhetorical question, though. He turns toward the door and then pauses. “If you intend to make calls again,” he adds without turning backaround, “you do it with me listening. And Yelena…was a casual fling, one I’ve already forgotten.”
My chest does a stupid, traitorous little unclench at that statement, which I absolutely refuse to examine too closely.
Dominik leaves after that pronouncement. When the door clicks shut, I lean my hip against the counter and press my hands to my eyes to try and slow the world down long enough to breathe.
Two hours. Less, by now. Another clock I didn’t wind up is counting down again.
“Please call me back,” I whisper to the ceiling, to the city, to my brother who has made a fool of me too many times recently. “Please, Archer.”
Somewhere down the hall, Dominik’s voice lowers into the cadence I’ve come to know that he uses when he’s plotting. It’s steadier than mine. It always will be.
I scrub a hand over my face and go find more coffee. I make it by memory and luck, coaxing the machine into doing what I want with as few buttons as possible while I eat a bowl of cereal. Then, I pour two cups.
When I carry the second cup down the hall to his study, I don’t have to say it. He already knows I’m there. So do Viktor and Petrov. Both of their shoulders tense but they don’t look my way.
Dominik holds out his hand without looking, and when my fingers brush his as I pass the mug, the jolt is softer this time, no less real.
“Thank you,” he says. The words fit his mouth awkwardly like they don’t get spoken very often but they’ll find their way out for me. “Did you eat something?”
“Yes,” I answer.
I then sit on the couch in the back of the study and wrap both hands around my mug and listen to him plan his hunt. The clock on the wall keeps counting.
If Archer calls back, everything changes. If he doesn’t, everything changes faster.
Either way, I’m not the same girl I was before Dominik took a bullet for me. In fact, I’m not entirely sure who I am now.
A woman who lies to save the man who betrayed her and says “no” to aPakhan.
A woman who likes the way the word “mine” sounds coming from a mobster.
The second hand on the clock moves—another reminder there’s always a countdown in this world. I drink my coffee so slowly I don’t have to worry about burning my tongue.
When Dominik’s phone finally begins to vibrate against the wooden desk, the sound is probably soft and ordinary to anyone else.
To me, it is the sound of everything about to change.
18
Dominik
The phone vibratesagainst the wood, a short buzz that freezes the room. I know before I look because of the timing, the way Alina’s eyes jump to my desk and then away. Archer finally remembered he has a sister he loves.
I don’t rush. I take a sip of the coffee she made for me first. Even though it’s cold, I feel obliged to drink every sip. I also want Archer to sweat. It’s the least he deserves for what he did to her, to us.
“Please answer it,” Alina whispers, her voice shaking. She’s now standing near the bookshelf, her bare feet planted like she’s bracing herself.
I can’t help but notice that her neck is also still bare. She still refuses to wear the necklace I left out. Her rejection is more frustrating than I thought it would be. I don’t understand why it matters so much—why her refusing a piece of metal feels like she’s refusing protection. Refusing me.
Pushing aside those thoughts for now, I finally answer the call and hit the speaker button. “Morozov.”
There’s silence on the line, then: “Dominik.”
“Archer. You finally found some courage,” I say. My voice is even. Pain bites under the bandage when I lean forward, so I don’t. “Or you ran out of places to hide.”
“I have information,” Archer says. “On the guns.”
I glance at Viktor, who’s posted by the window, arms folded, a soldier who got us through worse than this. He shifts his weight a fraction. Ready. “Talk,” I say.
