29
Polina
I keep reorganizing the same list because it gives my hands something to do while my mind tries to eat itself alive.
That’s the truth of it.
I’m not on duty. No one asked me to inventory the medical supplies in this house. Dmitri definitely didn’t appoint me quartermaster of his family compound.
I’m sitting at the desk in my room with a yellow legal pad, a pen, and a stack of notes from the downstairs infirmary because checking expiration dates and counting gauze feels better than sitting still with my own thoughts.
It also keeps me from thinking too hard about the pregnancy test in the bathroom trash.
I tell myself I’m only planning for the obvious. There’s a war coming. Houses like this always need more trauma supplies than anyone wants to admit. Men who claim they’re prepared for everything still forget chest tubes, broad-spectrum antibiotics,and blood pressure cuffs that actually work. That part is true. The rest is nerves.
I circle saline, write chest seal kits in the margin, then cross it out because I already wrote it fifteen minutes ago.
A knock sounds at the door, startling me. My hand flies to my chest, and I suck in a gasp before I call out, “Come in.”
The handle turns. I glance over, expecting Katya or one of Dmitri’s men checking on me, but the sight of Tony in the doorway stops me cold.
He has a file folder in one hand.
His face tells me the rest.
My pen slips from my fingers onto the desk.
“Who got shot?” I ask. “What’s happened?”
Tony shuts the door behind him. “No one’s been shot.”
That should help, but given the look on his face, it somehow doesn’t.
I sit back in the chair and look from him to the folder. “Then why do you look like a man about to ruin my life?”
“Can I come in?” he asks.
That gets my attention. Tony is not polite by nature. If he is asking permission, it means he wants me to have the chance to say no before he says whatever he came here to say.
He takes my silence for the invitation it is and shuffles a few feet closer. “We finished decrypting more of the Morozov archivetonight. There was a folder in the recovered files tied to a car accident from sixteen years ago.”
The room narrows to the space between his mouth and the folder in his hand.
“My parents,” I surmise.
He gives a quick, sorrowful nod and replies, “Yes.”
I don’t trust my voice yet, so I look at the folder instead of speaking. Plain cream cardstock. No label. No name on the tab. After all these years, the answer to the only question that has ever mattered to me might be sitting in Tony’s hand looking like tax paperwork.
“Who else has seen it?” I ask.
“Just me so far. I thought you deserved to read it first, before anyone decided what to do with it.”
“What is it exactly?” I ask almost timidly. “An internal report? Some half-buried rumor your analysts dressed up to impress themselves?”
Tony shakes his head once. “Do you want to read it?”
I swallow hard, trying to force the word out. “Yes.”
