“That’s all.”
Ruslan has the car running when I get to the street. He reads my face before I reach the door and pulls out without waiting for direction. We drive two blocks before he speaks.
I watch the street through the window. “He bought it for now, but he’s got men tailing me now.”
“That will make things difficult for the two of you,” he comments, and all I can muster in reply is a hard swallow.
My father accepted the story tonight because I gave him nothing to contradict, but two men logging my movements means two men watching every location I visit, face I meet, and address I park outside. My father operates with a thoroughness that other people mistake for patience. At some point, he will pull the staff records from Moscow General. It is the natural next step for a man who closes every loop, and when he does, he will find a name.
Polina Ilyinichna Kozlov.
That name connects to a family, and that family connects to everything my father has spent the past decade trying to dismantle. The story I just fed him won’t survive that scrutiny. It is only a matter of time, and the window between now and that moment is the only thing I have to work with.
I need to warn her. Not tonight, because I need to think through what I can say and what saying it will cost. Every word in that conversation must be chosen, because she listens the way surgeons operate, and anything I leave open will be examined. I’ve been precise about information my entire career, keepingwhat’s useful and releasing nothing I can’t take back. With Polina, that instinct runs headlong into something I don’t have a name for yet, which is the part that’s been keeping me up since long before our weekend getaway.
I call her the next morning, and she picks up on the third ring.
“I have to scrub up for a surgery in fifteen minutes,” she rushes out. “Is something wrong?”
There is no version of this conversation that doesn’t cost something. I’ve been aware of that since I parked outside my building last night. “I need us to pull back for a while. Where we’re seen, how often we’re in contact. Nothing permanent. Just a few weeks.”
The line goes silent for a beat before she asks, “What changed?”
“Nothing I can detail right now.”
The second pause that follows has weight to it. I know her pauses well enough now to tell the difference between the ones where she’s deciding what to say and the ones where she’s deciding how much she’s willing to tolerate. This is the second kind.
“Lev, what changed? What happened?”
“It’s being handled. I need you to trust me.”
“Idotrust you. I’m asking what happened that makes you want to go quiet without telling me why.”
“I’m just asking for caution.”
“Without a reason.”
“Without one I can give you right now.”
She goes quiet long enough that I check the screen to make sure the call is still live. When she speaks again, something underneath her voice has gone cold.
“I told you I won’t do this on half-truths, and I meant it,” she snaps.
“That isn’t what this is. It’s a timing problem.”
“It’s you deciding what I’m allowed to know and when I’m allowed to know it!”
“Polina—”
“No.” Her voice never climbs when she’s furious. “I have lied to my colleagues every day for months. I’ve ignored my sister’s calls because I couldn’t face telling her I was falling for a man with ties to our enemies. I did that knowing what it could cost me, because I decided this was worth it. But I made that call with the information I had. The moment you start controlling what I know, you take away my ability to decide for myself. I will not be managed.”
There’s no argument to be made against any of what she’s saying, and I don’t attempt one.
“Two weeks,” I plead. “Maybe less.”
“I’m not built for whatever this looks like from where you’re standing,” she breathes. “A relationship where you filter out the pieces that might scare me and hand me what’s left. I don’twantto be built for it. I left the Bratva world behind so I would never have to learn how.”
“I understand.”
