Our apartment is a fourth-floor walk-up in a building older than the Soviet Union, the kind where stairwells echo and the pipes complain about existing. Perfect for people who need to disappear but still keep an eye on the street.
Damian insisted we take the side facing the courtyard as it’ll be “less exposure,” then installed alarms I haven’t seen outside a Special Forces manual.
Now he stands at the kitchen counter eating an apple, all casual.
“Your shift starts in an hour,” he says without looking up, trying to conceal the tension behind his voice with neutrality.
“I know.”
“You didn’t sleep.”
“I did.”
I can almost hear his eyebrow rising.
I pull on my coat. The same one I’ve worn for days because my alias, Eva Vetrova, is a creature of habit. She smokes, drinks cheap vodka, works nights, and talks to no one except the men she’s infiltrating.
She is everything I’m not.Maybe she’s exactly what I’m becoming.
“Eat something first,” Damian says quietly.
“I’m not hungry.”
He puts the apple down.
“Harper.”
That’s the problem with him using my real name. I don’t hear it from anyone but him.
For a moment, I think he’s going to push and ask about the nightmares, the way I’ve been drifting through the days in that numb, weightless state, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he steps towards me..
“You can’t keep running on fumes,” he murmurs. “You’re going to burn out.”
“You burned out years ago,” I say, deflecting. “You’re fine.”
“That’s not the compliment you think it is.”
I stare at him. He stares back.
Five days in this city and he still hasn’t shaved. The stubble suits him too much. He knows it. I know it. The entire criminal underworld probably knows it.
And that’s part of the problem—nothing about him is inconspicuous.
He has a presence.
People feel him when he enters a room. They look up, try to make sense of the restraint coiled under his stillness.Even when he wears the identity of an unemployed, disgruntled veteran named Aleksandr Vanyev, he carries himself like a weapon.
It’s why the underworld bosses trust and fear him. It’s why they talk to him.
And it’s why every time someone stares too long at me, Damian positions himself slightly between us, even when they don’t realize he’s doing it.
“Eat,” he repeats softly.
“No.”
His jaw flexes.
