"You think my father is letting him run—giving him rope," Ivan says.
"I think Sergei didn't survive this long by being blind," I reply. "Boris tried to push you in that hallway. He attempted to dictate your security. You refused. Sergei saw it."
I lift my gaze just enough to see Ivan's face.
He is looking down at
me—not like he looks at a weapon, but as if he is measuring the weight of what I just said.
"You've been thinking about this," he observes.
"Yes."
"You don't usually offer strategic analysis."
His words are neutral, but his eyes are not.
My mouth moves before I can stop it.
"You don't usually tell me to sit on the floor."
The sentence lands hard—too sharp, insubordinate. It's the kind of thing I wouldn't have said three days ago. Before the soap. Before the scars.
Ivan's expression doesn't change.
His hand slides from the top of my head to the back of my neck.
His fingers curl around the muscle there, firm—like a collar.
My breath catches in my throat.
"No," Ivan says quietly. "I don't."
He holds me there.
My eyes stay forward. If I look up while his hand is on my neck, I don't trust what I will see or what I will do.
Then he releases me and turns back to the file as if he didn't just pull a wire tight inside my chest.
"Stay," he says. "I have work. Then we eat."
I settle back onto my heels.
The carpet presses into my knees. The ache builds, steady and familiar. I don't shift. I let the discomfort sit there because it grounds me. It's easier to focus on physical pain than on the ghost sensation of his hand on my neck.
I'm not guarding him—not really.
I'm here—beside him, below him—so he can reach for me when his mind starts to slip.
He doesn't say that. He doesn't have to.
I feel it in the way his hand finds me without looking, in the way his thumb moves.
And I am letting it happen.
The Kennel taught me that connection is a weakness. It taught me that boys who cling to each other get broken.
But this doesn't feel like weakness.
