Those eyes used to be ice. That’s what I remember from the beginning—the way he looked at me when I crashed Sophia’s wedding, like I was a problem to be assessed and dealt with. There was nothing behind them except calculation. I told myself I wasn’t drawn to that. I was wrong, but it doesn’t matter anymore, because that’s not what I see now.
Now there’s something alive in them.
Something that wasn’t there before.
Hannah has been warming to him gradually, the way she does things—cautiously at first, then all at once. She’s started bringing Mr. Brummy over to greet him in the mornings, wiggling the bear’s arm in a little wave. Nikolai started doing a voice for the bear last week. I don’t know when or how that began, but Hannah finds it unreasonably funny, collapsing into giggles every time.
I find it unreasonably something too.
I look back down at my magazine.
Hours fly by.
Later in the evening, when Hannah is down, I find him on the balcony.
He’s got his hands on the railing, watching the city. The sky is doing something extraordinary to the west—pink bleeding into purple, the light catching the high-rises and turning them briefly gold. I pull my sweater tighter and come to stand beside him.
“She’s out like a light,” I say, before he can ask.
He nods, but his jaw is tight. I can see something working behind his eyes.
“Niko.”
“She deserves to know her father.” He says it to the skyline, then turns to look at me.
My chest tightens.
I’ve watched him with her all week—the bear voices, the careful distance he keeps that’s slowly, incrementally closing. He’s been so patient about it. More patient than I expected from a man who was never patient about anything. And I understand the impulse. I do. I want it too, in the uncomplicated version of this where Ronan Aslanov doesn’t exist and the past four years were just a bad dream we both woke up from.
But that’s not where we are.
Aslanov has Nikolai’s empire on top of his own. What Nikolai has is resourcefulness, and Timur, and a man named Popov. I’ve been trying not to do the math on those odds. When I do, it doesn’t comfort me.
And if he doesn’t make it—if Hannah spends these weeks unknowingly playing with her father and then loses him before she ever gets to know what he was to her—I don’t know how I’d explain that. To her, or to myself.
“Let’s get out of danger first,” I say. Quietly, because I know it costs him.
He closes his eyes briefly. Then nods. “I’ll make it quick.”
My hand moves to his on the railing. He turns his palm up without hesitation, fingers closing around mine.
I look out at the city. His hand is rough, scarred in places—hands that have done things I’ve chosen not to examine too closely. They’re also the hands that carried Hannah’s bear up a flight of stairs and presented it to her like it was the most important thing he’d ever done.
I hold on.
Whatever’s coming, it is close.
I can feel it in my bones.
Chapter Eighteen
Nikolai
“I can’t,” says Elias. “This is as far as my hands reach.”
“What the fuck you mean you can’t?” I grip the phone tighter. “Why do you think I pay you,mudak?”
“Because I’m the best you’ve got. Which is exactly why I’m telling you—I’m not built for Aslanov. Nobody is. You want to take the fucker down, Popov’s your best shot.”
