"One-ninety," she says. "Still dropping. I should eat."
"Irina's bringing something up. Chicken and rice with steamed vegetables."
She nods. Her eyes move over my face the way they did in the warehouse, reading me. She's looking for something. I sit on the edge of the bed, close to her, and she reaches for my hand.
"You killed him," she says. Quietly. A fact, not an accusation.
She turns my hand over in her lap. Her thumb traces the line of my knuckles, the ridge of bone and tendon, and I let her because her touch is the only thing I want right now.
"How do you feel?" she asks.
The question surprises me. I look at her face and she's watching me with those blue eyes that miss nothing. I know she's not asking about the logistics or the fallout or the captains. She's asking how I feel. About killing a man who held me at my christening.
"I feel like I should feel more," I say. "But I don't."
Her thumb stops on my knuckle. She holds it there.
"I know what that's like," she says.
I look at her. She looks at me. And in the space between us is a thing we share that we have never named, the flat place where remorse should live and doesn't, the quiet where the guilt should be. She found it on her apartment floor with a small kitchen knife. I found it in a warehouse with my father's Makarov. And neither of us is going to pretend to the other that we lost sleep over it, because the lie would be worse than the truth, and we are people who have chosen truth over comfort.
"Viktor had allies," I say. "Men who were loyal to him, or at least loyal to what he was offering. His death doesn't erase that. It reorganizes it. The men who were taking his money will need to decide quickly who they're loyal to now, and some of them will decide wrong. I will deal with them the way I dealt with Alexei and the way I dealt with Viktor."
"Okay."
"And the captains will talk. A Pakhan who kills his own blood. It will raise questions. Some of them will be fair. I'll answer the fair ones. The unfair ones I'll answer differently."
"Okay."
I look at her. "You keep saying okay."
"Because it is okay." She lifts her chin. The gesture is so completely her, the tilt that saysI'm here and I'm not moving,that something cracks in my chest for the second time today. "You killed a man who kidnapped me and was going to let me die if you didn't hand over your rightful position. That's not a moral dilemma, Nick. That's cause and effect."
I take her hands and hold them in mine. I look at her face in the lamp light and I think about everything I planned to say and I throw it away because she doesn't need a speech. She needs the truth.
"There is one thing," I say.
She waits. Patient and still, the way she is when she knows something important is coming.
"You were taken today because you're the woman who lives in my house. You were taken because you are my weakness. You are the only leverage that works on me, the only variable that changes my behavior, the only thing in this world that could make me consider, even for a second, giving up the chair."
"Nick—"
"Let me finish." I tighten my grip on her hands. She closes her mouth. "As long as you are here, you are a target. You are something that can be taken, something that men like Viktor see as temporary, removable, expendable. You are a personal matter. But as my wife, you would be family. And in my world, Sadie, family is untouchable. A wife has the protection of every man in this organization. Every oath they swore to this chair extends to the woman who sits beside him. Any man who touches her isn't committing a personal slight. He's declaring war."
Her breathing has changed. I can see her pulse in her throat as it quickens.
"I was waiting," I say. "I wanted to give you time. Time to finish healing. Time to start nursing school. Time to become the woman you're becoming without me putting a ring on your finger and asking you to carry the weight of what that means in this life. I was being patient. And today, that patience almost killed you."
I reach into my pocket. I pull out the velvet box and I open it and I hold it between us so the diamond catches the light the way it caught the desk lamp downstairs, a small bright point in a room that is otherwise soft and dim.
"This was my mother's," I say. "She wore it for twenty-six years. My father gave it to me the day she died and told me it was mine when I was ready. I've been ready since the wreck."
Her eyes are on the ring. Then on me. Then the ring. Then me.
"I'm not asking you to be a Bratva wife." I hold her gaze. "I'm asking you to be my wife. The Bratva is the job. You are the life. And I need the life more than I have ever needed the job, and I will spend every day making sure you know that."
She's quiet for long enough that I feel the first cold thread of doubt I've felt in months.
