I reached my building without incident. Climbed the stairs. Key in the lock, deadbolt turning, the click of safety that was really only an illusion. I set my cane in the umbrella stand, hung up my coat, put my keys in the bowl at the three o'clock position.
My phone buzzed in my coat pocket, and I tapped the screen. The screen reader spoke in its flat, mechanical voice.
On my way. — M
I didn't respond. He'd see that I'd heard his message and know I was here.
Milo was coming to me. Coming to lie beside me in the darkness and hold me against his chest and pretend that tomorrow was just another day. As if I hadn't stared death in the face and somehow—somehow—lived to tell about it.
I felt numb. Not quite here, not quite anywhere. My body moved through the familiar motions, but I felt like I was watching myself from somewhere outside my skin. Like I'd left a part of me back at the restaurant, and what remained was just going through the choreography of being alive.
Because Iwasstill alive. That was the part my brain couldn't quite process. I should be dead. The night was almost over. The deadline had nearly passed, and nothing had happened, and I didn't know what that meant except that I knew the waiting wasn't over. The danger hadn't passed. It had just...shifted into something I couldn't see yet.
But I was still here.
I stood in my kitchen and pressed my palms flat against the counter and tried to think. Maybe Milo had found something to satisfy Viktor, some evidence or argument that bought more time. Maybe that's why he'd never shown up at the restaurant tonight?—
Or the deadline didn't really matter anymore. Because the decision had been elevated above Viktor's pay grade. Above his local crew. Above anyone Milo could negotiate with or threaten or charm.
Maybe Konstantin didn't set deadlines. Instead, Konstantin observed. Evaluated. Drew conclusions at his own pace and acted on them with the quiet efficiency of a man who'd never needed to rush because the outcome was never in doubt.
I took a shuddering breath.
The shark had been replaced by the spider.
And I was sitting in the middle of the web with their secrets in my head, sending tremors down silk threads I couldn't see.
My forehead found the cold countertop. I pressed it there and listened to the silence of my apartment. The refrigerator humming. The pipes ticking in the walls. A car passing on the street below.
I thought about everything I'd collected from that piano bench. Names, routes, dollar amounts…all of it stored in the one place no one could search.
My memory.
It had felt like power once. Like proof that the woman behind the piano was more than a pretty prop in a silk dress.
Now it felt like a ticking bomb inside my head.
I heard his key in the lock. The deadbolt turning. The door closing. His footsteps…I knew them better than my own heartbeat now. The weight of him, the length of his stride, the way he paused just inside the doorway to find me in the dark.
"Hey," he said. And his voice was so soothing. So was his smell. The ocean at dusk. Warm on the surface. Something cold and deep running underneath.
"Hey."
He crossed the room. His hands found my waist, my hips, fingers brushing over the bruises he'd left there. He pressed his mouth against my temple and breathed me in, and for three seconds—just three—the spider and the web and the secrets all fell away, and there was only this. His breath in my hair. His heartbeat against my palm. The terrifying, impossible thing between us that neither of us had the courage to name.
Then his arms tightened, one fist bunching in the back of my dress. His pulse kicked up. And the fear was back.
"You played tonight."
"Yes."
"Jesus, Raven."
"I needed to go," I whispered.
He was quiet for a long time. Then he sniffed and settled back against me.
"How was your set?" he asked, his lips still against my temple. A normal question. The kind of question a man asks when he's pretending the world isn't on fire.
