Nick
The drive isn't far, and quicker at this time of night with less traffic. I try not to look at my hands on the steering wheel because if I do, I'll see her on them. The ghost of her hip under my palm. The way her hair caught on my knuckles when I swept it back.
I didn't want to leave her.
The thought sits under everything else. I left her warm and bare in a moment that was supposed to be ours. I told her I'd come back, but I don't know when, because my father is dying.
I inhale through my nose. Press the gas a little harder.
The last clear conversation I had with my father replays in my mind.Hide her, my son. Or bury her. Those are the only options he will leave you.
I'd told him she was nothing. New. It's the only lie I've told my father since I was nine years old, and he heard it for what it was, but he didn't push because he didn't have the breath. He just closed his eyes and told me to beware of my own uncle.
Viktor will already know about Sadie. I'm almost certain of it.
I haven't moved on her the way I would have moved on any other thing I wanted. I took her to dinner in a diner with windows facing the street. I kissed her under a streetlight. I walked into the lobby of her building and let a camera I paid toinstall watch me do it. Dmitri has the feed. My own men have the feed. And I'd bet diamonds Viktor's men have it by now, too.
I run it back the way I run everything back. Every moment I was visible. Every moment she was visible with me.
I was reckless. I should have been more careful.
The gate is open when I pull in. Lucia is on the step with Dmitri behind her.
She doesn't meet my eyes. She opens the door and falls in behind me the way she always does, and I understand from the way her hands are folded at her waist that I have less time than Dmitri told me on the phone.
"How long?" I ask.
"Not long, Mr. Zhirinovsky." Her voice is low. "The breaths. They've changed."
I take the stairs two at a time.
My father's room is lit by the lamp on his nightstand and nothing else. The oxygen machine is still hissing. His hand rests on top of the blanket, his eyes are closed, and his chest is moving in a pattern I don’t recognize. Long pause. Short pull. Long pause. The body forgetting its own rhythm.
Viktor is in the chair by the bed.
He stands when I walk in. He puts his hand on my shoulder as I pass, and I let him, because I don't have the seconds to spare for what my hand would do to his throat if I acted on instinct.
"Kolya," he says, low, the way a man says it at a funeral. "I'm glad you came."
I sit in the chair. I take my father's hand.
"Papa."
His eyes don't open. His fingers twitch against mine. It's enough.
"I'm here," I say in Russian, keeping my voice low, because this is between him and me. "I'm here, Papa. I'm not going anywhere."
His mouth moves. Nothing comes out.
I lean closer.
"Kolya," he breathes. Just that.
My throat closes. Viktor is two feet behind me. I don't know how much of the Russian he's catching, and it doesn't matter, because the Russian isn't for him.
"Everything is safe, Papa. As it should be."
His fingers twitch again. A flicker of something that might have been a smile if he had the muscle for it.
