The tremor had spread from my hands up my arms now, my whole body shaking with exhaustion and memory and rage I'd swallowed for too long.
"Two weeks after Maria died, after my license was suspended and my reputation destroyed, I tried one more time. Went public. Called journalists, posted everything online, tried to get anyone to listen. That night, three men broke into my apartment. If my neighbor's dog hadn't started barking, if I hadn't heard them picking the lock . . ." I shrugged, the gesture sharp and painful. "I went out the fire escape with whatever I could grab. Haven't stopped running since."
"Until last night."
"Until last night," I agreed. "When they found me anyway."
The silence that fell was different this time—heavier, full of everything I'd just confessed. Six months of running, of hiding, of watching a nineteen-year-old girl's life get erased to protect profits. Of knowing Brand was still out there, still cutting into people who trusted him, still selling pieces of them to the highest bidder.
Then Kostya moved.
Not suddenly, not aggressively. He simply reached across the space between our chairs and took my shaking hands in his. His palms were warm, callused, steady in a way that made my trembling more obvious. He didn't squeeze, didn't try to stop the shaking. Just held them, like he was anchoring me to something solid while everything else spun apart.
"He won't touch you again," he said, and it wasn't a promise or a comfort. It was a statement of fact, like saying water was wet or bones broke under enough pressure. "Not him. Not his people. Not anyone connected to him."
I should have pulled away. Should have maintained boundaries, kept walls up, protected myself from this dangerous intimacy. But his hands were so steady, and I was so tired of shaking. So I let him hold my hands while the fireplace flickered and the food grew cold and everything I'd been carrying for six months sat between us like a third presence in the room.
"You need to eat," he said finally, but he didn't let go.
"I know."
"Will you?"
I looked at the sandwich triangles, the soup that had stopped steaming, the water with its melting ice. Such simple things. Such impossible things when your body had forgotten how to trust that food would stay down, that you'd have time to digest before running again.
"I don't think I can," I admitted, the words barely a whisper.
His thumb moved across my knuckles, slow and deliberate, and that simple touch somehow made the shaking worse and better at the same time.
The tears came without permission—one moment I was staring at our joined hands, the next my vision blurred and something hot tracked down my cheek.
I tried to pull back, to stop it, to swallow the grief and rage and exhaustion that had been building for six months. But Kostya didn't let go of my hands. He held them steady while my body betrayed me, while years of medical training in emotional suppression crumbled like wet paper.
The tears came faster. Silent at first, just streams down my face that I couldn't blink away. Then my shoulders started shaking, and a sound escaped that might have been a sob or might have been something breaking inside my chest. Once that first sound escaped, the rest followed like hemorrhaging—ugly, harsh sobs that shook my entire body.
I hadn't cried when Brand destroyed my career. Hadn't cried when I'd run from my apartment with nothing but the clothes on my back. Hadn't cried through six months of hiding, of hunger, of checking every shadow for men who wanted me dead. But here, in this too-expensive chair with this dangerous man holding my hands, everything I'd bottled finally exploded.
The sobs got worse, louder, the kind that made your ribs ache and your throat raw. Sounds I didn't know I could make tore from my chest—grief for the doctor I'd been, for Maria who'd died terrified and alone, for every patient Brand had butchered while I hid in a basement pretending I could fix things with stolen supplies and good intentions.
Kostya moved. I felt the chair shift, then he was kneeling in front of me, huge frame folded down so we were eye level. He still didn't let go of my hands. His thumbs moved in slow circlesover my knuckles, steady rhythm like a heartbeat, something to focus on besides the way I was falling apart.
"Breathe," he said quietly when the sobs turned to hyperventilation. "Slow. Steady.”
I tried, failed, tried again. His voice stayed steady, counting for me when I couldn't count for myself. "One, two, three, four. Hold. Now out."
I don't know how long we stayed like that—him kneeling on expensive carpet, me curled in the chair sobbing like a child, our hands linked between us. Five minutes, maybe ten. Time meant nothing when you were busy dissolving.
Eventually, the sobs slowed to hiccups, then to just tears, then to nothing. I felt hollow, scraped out, like someone had performed emotional debridement without anesthesia. Everything hurt but in a clean way, like wounds that had been festering finally drained.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, voice destroyed from crying.
"Don't be." He was still kneeling, still holding my hands. This close, I could see flecks of gold in his dark eyes, could count the scars that decorated his face like a map of violence survived. "You needed that. Been needing it for months, probably."
"How did you—"
"Know?" He almost smiled, just a slight softening around his eyes. "I've seen that kind of control before. The kind that's holding so tight it's about to snap. You can't carry that much weight without eventually breaking."
"You don't break," I said without thinking.
