“I don’t know, baby.” The truth feels safer than another lie. “But you’re safe. I promise.”
If Nikolai is here, we’re safe. He proved that four years ago when he sacrificed—
Except he didn’t sacrifice anything. He survived. And he never told me.
Fresh tears spill down my cheeks. I try to blink them away for Hannah’s sake but I’ve passed the point of control. Too much has shattered tonight. My carefully rebuilt life. My grief. My understanding of the past four years.
What if he dies now?
What if this is real this time, and I lose him again before I can even process that I never actually lost him at all?
More violence. Glass shattering. Then Russian voices, rapid and angry, confirming what I already suspected—Aslanov sent that man.
Another impact. Then silence.
The silence is worse than the noise.
I hold Hannah tighter, barely breathing as a shadow appears in the doorway.
It grows. Takes shape.
Nikolai.
Blood drips from his knuckles in slow, steady drops, dark against the pale floor. He’s breathing hard, the black balaclava gone now—torn off in the fight.
I can see his whole face. The sharp angles of his cheekbones. The set of his jaw. Four years have carved new lines around his eyes, at the corners of his mouth.
He looks like Nikolai. Yet, he looks like a stranger.
“What—” My voice breaks. “How—”
He doesn’t answer. Just reaches for his phone, fingers moving across the screen with practiced efficiency.
He’s been dead for four years and now he can’t even look at me long enough to explain?
“We’ve been compromised.” He says it into the phone, voice clipped. “Da. We’re leaving.”
When I don’t move, his eyes snap to mine. Hard. Unyielding.
Hannah whimpers, burrowing deeper against my chest.
I stare at him from the edge of her bed, frozen.
“Come. Let’s go,”
“No.” The word comes out sharp. Defiant. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“We need to get out of here. All of us.” He gestures vaguely toward the living room. "Well. Except our friend out there."
There’s a body in my apartment. A dead man on my floor.
This is my life now. Again.
I look away from him because if I keep looking, I might break completely. Might start screaming and never stop.
But even with my eyes closed, I can feel him. His presence fills the room like a physical force, impossible to ignore.
How is he alive?
