She leaves with the guard, Franco, one of my more discreet men, and for the next hour and a half I pull up Molly’s GPS location just to be sure she’s still at the store.
When she gets back, she looks lighter and more refreshed. I watched her GPS as she went to the bookstore, then to the bakery next door, then home with Franco close behind. She offers me a hot chocolate as a thank-you, and I take it grudgingly.
She looks happy, and that should calm me, but it doesn’t.
The next day, we fight about her leaving again.
The day after that, we fight about her taking a walk alone on the rooftop garden.
The day after that, we fight about her going down to the lobby without her bracelet.
She starts sleeping in the guest room without a word to me about it, and I give her space.
Yet every night, the empty bed eats at me. The sheets feel cold. The room feels too large. I lie awake staring at the ceiling while anger, frustration, and longing pull me apart.
She’s just a few doors down, sleeping soundly in a room that isn’t mine. It’s driving me nuts.
Every instinct in me says to go to her, pull her into my arms, tell her she’s going to stay with me whether she likes it or not.
But I don’t.
I’m the one who created the walls between us. I’m the one who tightened the leash so much that she had no choice but to pull away. I know this, but knowing doesn’t change anything. Pride can be a miserable thing.
I hear her at night sometimes, walking to the kitchen for water, the soft pad of her feet on the floor. Once, when the baby made her queasy, I heard her quietly retching in the guest bathroom.
I stood in my doorway, torn between rushing to her and staying out of sight so I didn’t push her further away. Eventually, I forced myself back to bed.
I’m trying. God knows I’m trying. But I don’t know how to fit into this new version of myself. The one who wants to keep her safe without smothering her, the one who wants her to trust me while I refuse to trust anything around her.
A few days into our strained new routine, there’s a knock on my office door. Before I can answer, Davýd pushes inside holding a small brown envelope.
“Shipment number nine came in,” he says. “Except half the crates got rerouted somewhere between the docks and the warehouse.”
My temper spikes immediately.
“Stolen?” I ask.
“Looks like it.” He grimaces.
“Lebedev?”
“That’s my guess.”
I clench my fists. The timing couldn’t be worse. With Molly under my roof and my attention split, enemies are testing boundaries I normally guard like the jaws of a steel trap.
I take the envelope and scan the list of what’s missing. Weapons and cash, plus a few deliveries that were signed for under a falsified name.
“This is deliberate,” I mutter.
“Obviously,” Davýd says, dropping into one of the leather chairs. “They’re poking the Wolf to see what happens.”
“What happens,” I growl, “is I tear their organization apart.”
He smirks at that. “Ah. There’s the man I know.”
Before I can respond, the office door swings open again and Molly pokes her head inside. Davýd watches her curiously, as he’s usually the only one allowed to come into my office without knocking.
Her hair’s in a loose ponytail, she’s wearing leggings, one of my shirts tied at the waist. She looks like she’s trying to give us privacy, standing in the doorway instead of stepping in.
