“Yes?”
“If someone tries to come through that door and isn’t you or Sergei, what do your orders say?”
She considers me for a second. Then another. “My orders are to ensure you live long enough to be useful,” she says. “Make of that what you will.”
The faintest hint of something like a smile moves at the corner of her mouth. She leaves. The lock clicks as the door draws closed.
I stand in the center of the room, my hands empty, and listen. Two sets of boots outside the door, their thuds softened by caution and the order to stay at the edge of my shadow. The hiss of men breathing through their noses. A single muffled cough. The faint rub of leather against fabric. They are close enough that if I pressed my ear to the door, I could hear their heartbeats. I don’t. Instead, I cross to the window and pull the curtain back a fraction.
The glass is cold against my fingers. Snowflakes smear against the other side, catching the light from the security lamps below.Beyond the fence, the city is now a dark mass, cut here and there by streetlights. In her home, my best friend Vera must be resting, a handgun under her pillow, one arm wrapped around the small body that trusts her without question.
Nadia talks in her sleep sometimes, little half-words, bits of the lullaby I wrote in exile. She sings when she's scared. She thinks noise keeps monsters away. I taught her that. I also taught her to hide behind the wardrobe when someone knocks more than twice and never answer when someone asks who’s there. She has my habits and his eyes. Poor kid.
My mind drags me backward, even though I'm tired. Back to the office. To him. To the way he looked at me earlier, sitting behind that desk like a man carved from stone. The lamplight on his hands. The faint twitch in the muscle of his jaw, the only sign of strain he ever lets anyone see.
With a sigh, I head to the shower and let the hot water ease the knots in my shoulders. When I’m dry and clothed, a soft knock comes at the door. Opening it, I find Sergei standing there with a tray in one hand. Real food. Roast chicken, potatoes, black bread, and a bottle of very good wine. He steps inside without waiting for me to invite him and sets everything on the small table. “You didn’t eat,” he says.
I don’t bother denying it. He pulls out a chair for me, and my body betrays me by sitting before I think twice. He takes the seat across from me. Even the way he settles into a chair feels like possession. We eat in silence. The kind of silence that used to end with my back on his sheets and his hand in my hair. Five years have done nothing to dull the effect he has on me. His eyes keep drifting to my mouth, then to my throat, then lower. When I shift my knees under the table, his gaze follows the movementlike he’s remembering exactly how I used to move when he was inside me.
The space warms between us. I press my thighs together once. His eyes catch it. Heat flickers through his. When we’re almost done, he sets his utensils down with slow purpose. “Why did you run?” he asks. That voice is still designed to make you tell him things you shouldn’t.
I knew this was coming. I’ve rehearsed it for years, but nothing prepares me for saying it while his eyes are on me, dark and steady, full of a hunger he’s trying too hard to hide. “I found something I wasn’t supposed to,” I say.
His gaze doesn’t leave my face. It feels like being slowly stripped.
“In your vault,” I continue. “Behind a false shell. You should’ve known I’d dig there.”
His fingers tap once against the table. He looks calm, but his attention sharpens like a blade. “What did you see?” he asks.
“Names,” I answer with a shrug. “Accounts. Off-book payments. Quiet removals you justified as necessary.” My voice thins. “I saw the way you decide who lives and who disappears.”
His eyes get colder, but I see dark and sharp desire bubbling there, rising because I’m challenging him.
“You still think I kill for sport,” he observes, eyes narrowing as he huffs out a humorless laugh.
“I know you don’t,” I answer. The truth sits like a stone in my chest. “That’s what scared me. You don’t make mistakes, Sergei. You calculate. And I realized something very simple.”
“What?” he asks. The word is soft, but the tension in his jaw isn’t.
“That if I stayed, one day, my name could be on one of those lists.” I swallow. “Or whatever came after me.”
His eyes narrow. He feels the edge of what I’m not saying. “You ran because you thought I’d kill you.”
“Not you.” I frown exasperatedly and push off from the table. “Someone else with the same ambitions, the same penchant for lists as you. Don’t you get it?” The truth is on the tip of my mouth. I square my shoulders. “I ran because I was pregnant and if someone found out—an enemy—I wouldn’t be the only target.”
Everything in him goes still in the way a predator stills before it chooses a direction. “You lie,” he says, quiet and deadly.
“I don’t,” I whisper as I turn to look deep into his eyes. A fracture breaks through, and while it’s tiny, it’s devastating.
“How old?” he asks.
“Four,” I say. “She turns five in the spring.”
He closes his eyes once, as if someone hit him. When he opens them, the restraint is fraying.
“You took my heir,” he says. “You hid her and ran.”
“Yes,” I say. “Because your enemies were circling, and that was before the Courier started cutting women apart to get your attention. If she stayed in your shadow, she wouldn’t have survived.”
