I smile while he appears slightly … amused? Or close enough to it.
“It’s a good movie,” he adds.
“Yeah, I know, I haven’t seen it in a while. So you moved to the US when you were a kid? With your family?”
“When I was ten. With my mother, my father, and my four brothers.”
I blink because that’s a lot of family to imagine. “I’m an only child,” I blurt.
“I know.”
I roll my eyes. “Where do you even find information like that about me? What kind of files do you keep on people?”
He doesn’t answer, just looks at me like I’m being dramatic about something obvious.
“Do you miss Russia?”
His throat moves slowly. He thinks about it for a moment before looking over at me, his expression softening just enough to notice. “Very much,” he says, voice dropping lower. “It’s a nice place to grow up. I miss my family there.”
It never occurred to me that Russia could be a nice place to grow up in. Everything I know about it comes from headlines. Political disasters, restrictions, the whole authoritarian mess. But that’s not what he’s talking about, is it? He’s talking about home. About family. The place itself probably doesn’t matter as much as the people in it.
“What city did you live in?”
“Yekaterinburg.”
“Oh, I’m not even going to try to pronounce that,” I say, half-laughing while rubbing the back of my neck. “I’d completely butcher it.”
His mouth twitches, and for half a second, it looks like he’s trying not to smile.
When I first saw him, he came off as cold, looked like a career criminal. Tattoos covering his skin, all bulging muscles.
But here, watching him carefully pet Clover, he seems almost gentle. Which is probably exactly what serial killers want you to think before they murder you.
Jesus, I need professional help again.
His eyes flick down to my collarbone for a second before darting away.
“Alexei …” I say, then bite my lip because I already regret starting this conversation.
“What are you really doing here?”
His head snaps toward me.
“I had a bad day.”
“Want to talk about it?”
I study him while he focuses on Clover. The tattoos on his neck are intricate, wrapping around his throat and disappearingunder his shirt. His nose has been broken at least once. Maybe more.
There’s a visible bump and a mark cutting across the bridge. His hands dwarf Clover completely, covered in ink and old wounds. One particularly thick scar runs across his knuckles, raised even under the tattoo covering it.
He sighs. “Nyet.”
I look over at him into his brown eyes. He looks sad, though I don’t really know how to explain it. God damnit, why am I feeling bad for someone who has actually murdered people?
“What do you like doing? Like hobbies, I mean.” I ask.
I want to know more about him. He’s too big of a mystery to me.
