“Do you? Because you sound remarkably calm for a man who is describing the end of something.”
“I don’t want it to end.” I rub the back of my neck.
“I’m a Kozlov. I’m not naive about what this world costs people. I’ve accepted the risk. The part I haven’t accepted is being kept in the dark by someone I’m supposed to trust.”
I close my eyes.
The whole truth is right there, but none of it is sayable right now. Not the parts that are merely dangerous, and especially not the unforgivable part. Telling her what I know about her parents’ deaths and my father’s mission to discover who she is, when she has a surgery waiting and no way to catch her when it lands, would be cruel. I know that, and I also know I’m using it as cover.
So, I say nothing.
“Okay,” she says with a huff. One word, quiet and final, nothing like the way she usually ends a call.
Then the line goes dead, and I’m almost certain I’ve lost her.
I sit with the phone on the table and look at the wall. My penthouse is silent. Outside, Moscow is doing what it always does, indifferent and continuous, full of people who have no idea what just happened. I’ve sat in rooms after far worse and felt nothing; walked away from situations that should have carved something from me, and drove home with steady hands.
Right now, I can’t get off the couch.
