He nods until nodding his head is all he knows how to do.
I step out into the main parking garage where the air is cold enough to make my wound pucker. Petrov follows, silent at first.
“Boss,” he says when we’re halfway to the elevator that takes me up to Alina again. “You keeping him breathing because of the girl?”
I turn and look at him. He holds my gaze. He doesn’t say Alina’s name. He doesn’t have to.
“I want him to keep breathing because I may need his mouth tomorrow,” I say. It’s true. It’s not the only truth. “I’m also working on a deadline that doesn’t include time to bury a mistake tonight.”
He nods. He approves of efficiency. He pretends not to approve of mercy, but he likes serving a man whose violence looks clean enough to admire in the morning.
On the elevator, I brace my palm on the wall of mirrors when the car lurches and the wound pulls.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, as if it senses my moment of weakness. Gavriil’s name lights the screen as the elevatordoors open into the penthouse corridor where my two men stand watch. I let his call go to voicemail. I can’t deal with him right now. If Gavriil senses hesitation, the clock will run faster.
Inside the apartment, my jaw clenches when I see the white roses on the kitchen island.
Gavriil must have had them delivered while I was downstairs and none of the guards thought to mention it. I count them twice, relieved that there are only eleven before heading to the bedroom.
Alina sleeps on her side, clutching the other pillow, undisturbed by my presence. She looks softer in sleep, untouched by everything I am. I shouldn’t lay my hands on her again. I plan to as soon as my side heals and Archer is dealt with.
The chair that was only for decoration before she arrived and took over my bed has now learned the shape of me. I retake it and count her breaths. Each rise and fall remind me why I claimed her. The number is the same as the number of men I would kill to make sure she keeps doing it just like that. I don’t love that about myself. I accept it anyway.
I must have dozed off, because the next time I open my eyes, Alina stands in front of me on bare feet. Her long, dark hair is unbrushed, like she just rolled out of bed. My bed. She’s never looked more beautiful.
She takes me in all at once—shirt with its new, angry stain mostly hidden by dark fabric, the way I’m bracing without admitting it.
“What did you do?” Alina asks.
23
Dominik
“What did you do?”
It’s not a request. It’s not even a demand. It’s a woman who hasn’t decided whether or not she can carry the weight of something heavy and is asking for it to be handed over to her anyway.
I stand up from the chair, and the room tilts a degree. “What I had to,” I answer.
“Dom,” she says, my name a small, sharp thing in her mouth. “If you say that to me again like it explains something, I’m going to throw your chair down the hall and then kick you out of your own room.”
“You won’t,” I remark quietly. “The chair is almost as big as you are, hellcat.”
Her mouth does a thing that isn’t quite a smile. “Try me,” she responds. Then, she slips into the bathroom and returns with a glass of water she pushes into my hand, along with a handfulof pills. Antibiotics, over-the-counter painkillers, fever reducers, etc.
I take them because she went to the trouble to retrieve them for me. Because she actually cares if the infection spreads, my temperature spikes, or if I’m hurting.
“I want details,” she says when the glass is empty, and my pulse has stopped racing. “Not the poetry. The truth.”
“You won’t like it,” I say.
“I don’t like anything lately,” she admits. “That’s not a good argument. Sit down.”
I sit and she takes a seat on the edge of the bed across from me.
“I made the kid remember how much he needs air,” I say as I lay it all out for her. “With a tarp. I made him give me Miami and Bayonne and a man with a bar where shady meetings happen on Tuesdays. I asked if he wanted to keep enough fingers to hold a handlebar, and he made a good decision. I didn’t let him asphyxiate.”
Alina’s face changes while I talk in the way people do when they add one number and then another and don’t lie to themselves about the sum. It’s a look I understand.
