The drive back to downtown is long enough for the adrenaline to fade, for the cold calculation that carried methrough the violence to give way to something else that feels uncomfortably like fear. Not fear for myself, but fear for her, fear that her father won't listen, that he'll be stupid enough to try again, and that next time I won't be there to stop it. That I've made things worse instead of better, that by threatening him I've only escalated the situation, that he'll reach out to people with more resources and more skill than the tracker I killed.
Fear that I can't protect her, not really, not when there are so many threats and I'm only one man.
That fear keeps me mostly awake all night, tossing and turning until I finally get up, punish myself with an especially brutal workout, and take a cold shower to try to drive the ever-present lust for Svetlana out of my head long enough to get to my meeting with Ilya without getting derailed by the need to satisfy the arousal that never seems to fully go away since Russia.
I need to focus when I’m around Ilya. I can't let him see that anything's wrong. Especially since I’m doing the opposite of what I told myself I would when I got back, and following Svetlana instead of leaving her alone.
Ilya is at his desk when I arrive. He gestures for me to sit and wait while he finishes whatever he's working on, and then he looks up at me, his jaw set.
"We have a problem," he says finally. His voice is calm, but there's an edge to it that puts me on alert. "Or rather, we had a problem, but I've dealt with it."
"What kind of problem?" I ask, keeping my tone flat.
"Mikhail Morozov contacted me this afternoon." Ilya’s expression is unreadable. "He was very upset. Apparently, someone broke into one of his meeting places, killed one of his men, and threatened him. He seemed to think I might know something about it."
My heart is pounding, but I keep my face blank. "What did you tell him?"
"I told him to fuck off." Ilya's smile is cold and sharp. "I told him that there's no business between us anymore, that whatever problems he's having are his own to solve, and that if he contacts me again, I'll consider it a hostile act. He wasn't happy about it, but he got the message. I don’t know why the fuck he called me when things between Svetlana and me ended months ago. I have no reason to have anything to do with her or her family."
"Why would he think you were involved?" I ask, genuinely curious.
"Because he's a pompous idiot who thinks everyone operates the way he does, who thinks that every act of violence must be connected to some larger power play." Ilya moves to his desk and sits, leaning back in his chair. "He mentioned something about his daughter, about someone warning him to leave her alone. I didn't ask for details. I don't care about his family drama.”
The mention of Svetlana makes my chest tighten, makes the words I've been holding back for days threaten to spill out. I want to tell him everything, want to explain what her father did to her, want to make him understand why she matters, why she deserves protection, why I can't just walk away and pretend I don't know what happened to her. I want to tell him that she was trafficked, that she was sold by her own father to men who hurt her in ways that still make me sick to think about, that she's not just some random woman but someone who survived hell and deserves a chance to rebuild her life.
But I can't. Because if I tell him that I know what happened to her, he'll ask how I know, and I'll have to admit that I was there, that I saw her in that cell, that I'm the one who got her out. And once he knows that, once he understands the full scope of my involvement, he'll put the pieces together. He'll realize that I didn't just extract her from a bad situation, that I kept her withme for days, that I brought her back to Boston myself, that I've been watching her ever since.
He’ll know I lied. That I misled him. That I blew up a mission for a woman he no longer cares about. He’ll know that I've been keeping secrets, that I've been operating outside his authority for my own purposes. And Ilya doesn't tolerate that kind of betrayal, no matter how loyal I've been in the past. He'll see it as a threat to his control, his power, to the carefully constructed hierarchy that keeps his organization running smoothly.
He might kill me for it, especially if he thinks my feelings for Svetlana might compromise my judgment or my loyalty to him. Which, clearly, they already have.
And if I'm dead, who will protect her? Who will watch over her and make sure that her father and Iosef don't send more trackers, that they don't find new ways to hurt her and drag her back into the nightmare she's trying to escape? Who will be there to intercept the threats before they reach her, to stand between her and everyone who wants to use her, break her, or destroy her?
No one. Because no one else knows what she's been through, no one else understands what she needs, no one else gives a fuck about whether she lives or dies except as it relates to their own interests.
No one else needs to atone for what’s happened to her the way I do.
So I stay silent and swallow the words that are burning in my throat, because that's the only way I can keep protecting her.
14
KAZIMIR
After the incident with the man tracking her, I decide that there needs to be more eyes on her than just when I can follow her and be sure she’s safe. I can’t exactly hire anyone to watch her without drawing attention to myself, and I can’t watch her 24/7. I still work for Ilya, and I can’t risk my schedule changing so much that he begins to notice and ask questions. In my free time, I can do what I want, but my time has always been his before it’s mine.
So instead, the next day that she’s out, I make a plan to ensure that I can keep an eye on her room, at the very least, even when I can’t physically watch her.
The motel she chose is the kind of place where the desk clerk doesn't look up from his phone when I walk past. The security cameras in the hallways have been broken for months, and no one's bothered to fix them, and the locks are so old I can open them with a credit card.
The room is worse than I expected, and I've been watching her go in and out of this place for days now, so my expectations were already low. The carpet is stained with things I don't want to identify, the walls are thin enough that I can hear thecouple next door arguing about money, and the bathroom has a persistent drip that would drive me insane within hours. She's been living here for almost a week now, and the thought makes my stomach twist as I look around and imagine her sleeping in the bed with its threadbare sheets, showering in the bathroom with its broken tiles and mildewed grout, eating whatever she can afford from the convenience store down the street because she's clearly hoarding the money I gave her.
I should have given her more cash or should have set up an account she could access without leaving a trail. But I was too focused on keeping my own involvement hidden so that Ilya wouldn't put a bullet in my head for betraying him…and it was hard enough getting her to accept that first installment of cash. Still, I should have tried harder, because now she's here, in this shithole, and I'm installing cameras so I can watch her every move.
I put the first one above the door, angled down to catch anyone who enters. The second goes in the smoke detector, which clearly hasn't had a battery in it for years, giving me a clear view of the bed and most of the room. The third is the hardest—I have to unscrew the vent cover in the bathroom and position it just right so I can see the sink and the shower without being obvious about it. It takes me twenty minutes to get the angle right, and the whole time I'm working, I'm listening for her footsteps in the hallway or the sound of her key in the lock, any indication that she's coming back early and about to catch me in the act.
She doesn't. I finish the installation, test each feed on my phone to make sure the angles are right and the resolution is clear, and I'm out of the room with five minutes to spare before I see her heading back toward the motel with her hands shoved in her pockets and her shoulders hunched against the cold.
I watch from my car as she climbs the stairs, unlocks her door, and disappears into the room. I should feel like I’ve violated her privacy in an unforgivable way—I know—but I don’t. All I feel is relief, because now I can see her and make sure she's safe. Now I can watch her all the time.
