I follow her out of the kitchen and into the wide, light-filled hallway. As I walk, I think about what he said, the part that's still turning over in my mind like a stone in a river, smooth and heavy and impossible to put down.
When I take a wife, it isn't going to be for some stupid family mandate. It's going to be because the woman I want, wants me back.
I think about that.
I think about the way he looked at me when he said it.
He said no. He said no to his family and no to the easy solution and no to me when I offered myself up like a transaction. Every single ‘no’ was a form of respect I have never once in my life been given by a man who had the power to simply take what he wanted.
Pavlina opens a door to a room full of books and cool winter light.
"The library," she says. "He reads in here most evenings."
I step inside and run my fingers along the spines. I don't think about the blood or the kitchen or the sound the knife made. I think about what he said and the weight of his hand over mine, and I think: I am in so much trouble.
Not the kind I came in with.
A different kind entirely.
Iosif
It's after nine when I finally close the last of the briefings.
The day has been long trying to manage fallout from Mia’s meeting with Vinzlee from my home office. Sasha Vinzlee has been handled with a carefully worded text from Mia's phone, sent by Mia herself with my guidance on phrasing, letting Sasha know she felt unwell and never left her apartment.
Sasha responded with a string of concerned messages and two voice notes I advised Mia not to listen to yet. The Vinzlee situation itself is something I've spent the better part of the afternoon mapping. Leverage points. Exposure risks. The fragile, shifting architecture of a mid-level operation that is about to lose its center of gravity.
I've also spoken to Zakhar, who had questions I didn't want to answer. And to Yury, who had observations I didn't want to hear.
All of it necessary. None of it the thing I've actually been thinking about.
The thing I've actually been thinking about is ridiculous.
I push back from my desk and stand, rolling the tension out of my shoulders as I head for the library. It’s the one room in this house that belongs entirely to me in a way the office doesn't, because the office is operational and the library is not. The library is the room where I stop being the man who manages things and become, for an hour or two, simply a man in a chairwith a book. It's a distinction most people wouldn't understand, but I need it the way I need sleep.
I open the door and stop.
She's in the armchair by the window.
My armchair. The leather one with the reading lamp angled just so, the one Pavlina knows not to move, the one that has shaped itself over years to the specific dimensions of my body in a way that would look absurd with anyone else sitting in it.
It doesn't look absurd with Mia in it.
She's pulled her legs up underneath her, bare feet tucked sideways, and she's holding a book open against her knee with one hand. Her hair is down now. It's longer than I realized, past her shoulders, still damp at the ends from what must have been a bath. She's wearing the clothes Pavlina found for her. The soft grey jumper that's slightly too large, which makes her look smaller than she is, which is already quite small, and she's so absorbed in whatever she's reading that she hasn't heard me open the door.
I watch her turn a page.
It's a small movement. Unremarkable. The kind of thing a person does a thousand times without thinking. But I watch her do it, standing in the doorway of my own library like a man who has forgotten how doors work, and something in my chest does something I'm not going to think about.
She looks up.
"Oh." Her eyes widen. The book shifts against her knee. "I'm sorry. Pavlina said, she said you read in here, but I thought you'd be working late, and I didn't think you'd mind if I—" She's already unfolding herself from the chair, feet reaching for the floor. "I can go."
"Stay," I say.
She stops mid-motion, looks at me.
"It's your chair," she says.
