I scrub both hands over my face, a wave of tiredness pulling at me. I haven’t slept in—what? Forty-eight hours? More? Time has lost meaning. There’s just the investigation, the files, and the endless fucking search for answers that refuse to come.
My office door opens without a knock.
“You need to eat something.”
Mrs. Kozlov stands in the doorway, holding a tray. Her expression is stern, disapproving in that way only she can manage. Unconsciously, I straighten up. Mrs. Kozlov is one of the only people who I actually fear. She changed my diapers and taught me Russian when my father was too busy. She’s the closest thing to a mother I have left.
Which means she’s one of the few people who can look at me like I’m an idiot and get away with it.
“I’m fine,” I mutter, turning back to the files.
“You’renotfine.” She sets the tray down on my desk with more force than necessary, making the coffee cups rattle. The smell of soup wafts to me and my stomach growls traitorously. Mrs. Kozlov’s eyes gleam with triumph. “Three days. No proper food. No sleep. This is foolishness.”
“I’ll eat later,” I tell her dismissively.
“Bozhe moy.” She mutters something else in Russian that I don’t quite catch, but the disgust in her tone is unmistakable. “You said this yesterday. And day before. Always ‘later.’ Your mother would box your ears for such stupidity.”
I wince at the invocation of my mother. Mrs. Kozlov knows exactly which buttons to push.
“Mrs. Volkov asks about you,” she continues, and there’s a sharpness in her tone in the way she says the title. It’s quite hostile, but not warm either. “Every day she asks if you have eaten. If you have slept. If you are—” She stops, her mouth pressing into a thin line of disapproval.
My jaw clenches. “Vera should focus on staying healthy. For the baby. That’s all that matters right now.”
“Da, the baby matters.” Her eyes bore into me, shrewd and knowing. “Alexei’s baby. Your brother’s child. This is why you work yourself to death? Because you feel guilty?”
The accusation stings and it takes everything in me to not wince and keep my face impassive. “I’m trying to find who is trying to kill us. That’s not guilt, that’s?—”
“Running.” She crosses her arms, and suddenly I’m eight years old again, being scolded for tracking mud through the house. “You hide in this office like scared boy. You avoid your wife—” Again, that slight emphasis on the word, loaded with judgment. “You punish yourself because you could not save Alexei. But this?” She gestures at the chaos around us. “This helps no one.”
I scowl. “I’mnotrunning?—”
“You are coward.” She says it bluntly, without malice, but they feel like a slap to my face. “I raised you better than this. Your father,bozhe upokoy, he would be ashamed.”
My face fuckingburnsat her comment. Of all the things to say to cut me down, she certainly knows them all. “Mrs. Kozlov—” I say angrily, but she holds up a hand to silence me.
“No! I speak truth, even if you do not want to hear it. That girl—” She won’t say Vera’s name, I notice. “She is your wife now for better or worse. She carries Volkov blood in her belly. This makes her family, whether I like it or not.” The admission clearly costs her as she looks like she’s sucked on a sour lemon. “And family does not abandon family. Even when it is—slozhno. Complicated.”
She moves toward the door, but pauses in the threshold, not looking back at me.
“Her family killed Alexei. This I do not forget. This I willneverforget.” Her voice hardens. “But you married her. You made choice. So either you treat her as a wife, or you send her away. This half-measure, this avoiding—it isweakness. And Volkov men are not weak.”
She leaves before I can respond, pulling the door closed with a firmness that’s just short of a slam.
The silence she leaves behind is deafening.
I stand there, staring at the closed door, her words echoing in my head.Coward. Your father would be ashamed. Volkov men are not weak.
My hands curl into fists at my sides. Hot rage surges through me and it’s sharp and defensive. How dare she. How dare she call me a coward when I’m working myself to death trying to protect everyone. When I’m hunting for the person who’s trying to kill me and Vera.
But beneath the rage is something worse. Something I don’t want to acknowledge.
She’s right.
The realization sits like lead in my stomach. Iamrunning. Iamhiding in this office, burying myself in investigation and files and dead ends because it’s easier than facing what’s happening between me and Vera. It’s easier than admitting that I’m falling for my brother’s girlfriend. It’s easier than confronting the guilt that eats at me every time I look at her and want?—
I slam my fist down on the desk, making the coffee cups rattle and papers scatter. The soup Mrs. Kozlov brought sloshes dangerously close to the edge of the bowl.
My fatherwouldbe ashamed. The words cut deeper than they should. My father fell apart so completely after my mother’s death that I had to raise Alexei myself. He was weak in every way that mattered.
