Claire’s absence would be noticed by Anya. I knew that and dreaded it.
“So, imagine my surprise when I went to find her.” He lowered his gaze for a moment. “I saw her note.”
“Then you know that we will not be ordering any security detail to follow her.” My voice was tight. Drinking water didn’t help, but I put more effort into masking my pain. “She wants to leave and have no involvement with us, and I’ll honor her wishes.”
“What if she’s taken?” Roman asked.
Then I will be furious.
I will want to burn the world down for her, to get her back.
I will slaughter anyone who even thinks about harming a hair on her head.
Fisting my hand, I breathed through the red-hot rage that filled me with the idea of her suffering at all. But that was the problem. She didn’t welcome my brand of revenge and security.
“Then that’s her choice. Not mine. I made it clear that I would keep her safe. I can’t force her to want to be here.”
The coldness in my tone seemed to be enough to shut them up.
Sergei looked around the table, brows raised, then cleared his throat. He changed the subject, back to a planned attack I’d been considering on one of the Popovs’ warehouses.
Grateful for them not to be watching me any longer, I sank back into the private misery in my head. Consumed with worry and anxiety about the sweet-hearted and altruistic doctor I had no business wanting, I battled with the frustration that she was off-limits to me simply because we had different backgrounds, different views on what was right and just in the world, a contrast that would be the final wedge to drive us apart for good.
26
CLAIRE
Going back to my apartment wasn’t an option. It didn’t even cross my mind. Nothing was left there that I couldn’t live without, anyway.
All I had as I walked out of the Orlov building, paused by the guard only to tell him that I was leaving, simple as that, was my phone. My purse. And the clothes I had put on this morning.
My passport was digital, thank God, but I needed to get a ticket back across the ocean to the small town where I’d grown up outside London.
Leaving the skyscrapers in New York would feel right. But as I rode into the area near the hospital I’d come here to work at, I struggled with the enormity of actually leaving Mikhail. Of abandoning Anya. Because that was what it was. There was no other way to view it. I was dropping her as my “patient”, unable to risk staying and getting further involved.
I was already complicit, and I as detoured to stop at a hotel, checking in quickly just to have a place to stop and sit and thinkbefore planning a ticket out of this country and away from the man I was falling for, I debated whether I was safe.
The last time I’d left his security, I’d run right into trouble. I saw the evidence of violence at the hospital, where Jack had been seen talking to those Mafia men and had been beaten for it.
I couldn’t be safe stopping in there, but as I sat on the bed of my hotel room, I knew I had to wrap up the loose threads there.
My career was all I had to look forward to. It was all I had going for me. In the wake of the storm Mikhail had caused in my life, I had to have something to fall back on. Throwing myself into my job would have to be the cause I’d commit to—again.
Love, and any solid future with a man, would have to go on the backburner again.
Groaning aloud, I fell back on the bed and closed my eyes.
The plan was to move around and broaden my horizons after my parents’ deaths. I’d left the UK for a change of scenery. My colleagues there applauded my move to the States. More of them praised me for signing up for the mission I’d never gotten a chance to reach.
Fuck.
I had to contact someone there and explain why I never showed up. It cut at my heart to fail and leave them hanging. I counted on giving back and helping others while I figured out where I wanted to be. But in ending up with Mikhail like I had, I still had no path forward.
But I can’t stay with him.
That much was crystal clear.
Going back home felt like a massive retreat, but it had to be the safest route. I’d missed the chance to go on that mission now. It had already started last week. I was probably risking lots of trouble at the hospital, lying about my sabbatical and being out of reach. I couldn’t have used my phone at the Orlov building. I learned that the hard way. Now that I wasn’t under their IT umbrella, my phone was receiving countless emails, texts, and voicemails. I left it on silent, too overwhelmed to resume being a member of society again.
