"Maybe. Maybe not." Another pause, testing me. Is he waiting to see if I'll defend her too strongly? "Bring her in tomorrow. I want to see her again myself and ask her some questions."
"What kind of questions?"
"The kind that determines whether she lives or dies. Noon. My office. Don't be late." He hangs up before I can respond.
I set the phone down and stare at the ceiling, calculating odds and options and the rapidly shrinking window we have to work with.
"That sounded bad," Sofiya says.
"He wants to see you tomorrow at noon in his office."
"He's going to recognize me."
"Probably."
"And then he'll kill me."
"Not if I kill him first."
She sits up, looking at me with an expression I can't read. Fear mixed with something else. It’s too hard to tell in the darkness. "You're serious."
"Always."
"Volk—"
"No." I sit up too, meeting her eyes. "We're not waiting anymore. We're not planning. We're not giving him time to figure this out. Tomorrow, we end this. Together. Or we die trying."
"That's suicide."
"Maybe." I pull her close, kissing her forehead.
She's quiet for a long moment, then she nods small but definitive. "Together," she says.
"Together." I pull her back down, wrapping myself around her like I can shield her from what's coming through sheer will. Like holding her tight enough will keep tomorrow from arriving.
"Tell me one more thing," she whispers. " Before everything ends."
"What?"
"Do you regret it, saving me in the desert? Giving me that chance instead of putting a bullet in my head?"
The question hangs between us. Heavy with implications and the weight of everything that's happened since that day. I could lie, tell her I regret nothing and every choice was strategic andplanned and exactly what I intended. But we're past lies now. Past pretending we're anything except two damaged people who found each other in the wreckage.
"Every day," I admit. "I regret it every day."
She stiffens and starts to pull away, but I hold her tighter.
"Not because you lived," I continue. "But because giving you that chance made you my responsibility, it made me care about whether you survived. I’ve spent ten years wondering if you were dead or alive while I continued serving the man who tried to kill you."
"That's on you. Not me."
"I know. But it doesn't change the fact that saving you destroyed me in ways I didn't see coming. Made me question everything. It made me realize I'd been serving a monster while pretending I wasn’t a monster too."
"And if you could go back, if you could change it?"
"I'd do it again." No hesitation. "I'd give you the water, and I'd drive away and spend the next ten years hoping you survived. Because the alternative is a world where you died at fifteen, and I don’t want to imagine a world that you’re not in."
She relaxes, melting back against me, her breath warm against my neck. "That's the most honest thing you've ever said to me."
