He looked at me across the island. I looked back. The ring caught the light between us like a small referee.
"Dmitri drives you. He walks you in. He waits."
"Fine."
"And you text me when you arrive."
"Fine."
"And if anything feels—"
"Nick." I put my hand on his across the counter. "I'll be careful. I'm always careful. Being careful is the only setting I have."
He exhaled through his nose. Then he kissed my forehead, the way he does, and said "two hours" in the tone that means it's a deadline.
So here I am. Dmitri is in the car outside. I have two hours.
Priya sees me before I make it past the reception window. She's on her feet and around the counter in three seconds, and then her arms are around me, tight and fierce, her face pressed against my shoulder. She's shorter than me by four inches but the hug feels enormous.
"Sadie." She pulls back and holds me at arm's length and looks at me with dark eyes that are bright and furious and relieved all at once. "Four days. Four days and all I got was a text that said 'I'm okay, I'll explain later.' That is not an explanation. That is a hostage note."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Are you okay? Are you actually okay because—" She stops. Swallows. "There was a cloth. Outside on the ground. Like the kind you—"
"I'm okay." I put my hands on her arms. She's shaking. I didn't expect that. Priya is the steadiest person I know, the woman who handles walk-in traumas and screaming children and insurance companies with the same unflappable calm, and she's shaking. "I'm here. I'm fine. Everything is fine."
Her eyes drop to my hands on her arms. To my left hand. To the ring.
Her mouth opens.
"Is that—"
"Can we sit down?"
We sit in the break room. Priya pours me coffee without asking and sits across from me at the small table by the window, folding her hands as she waits.
I tell her. The parts I can tell. I leave out the specifics because the specifics include a dead man in a warehouse and the particular details of how Bratva succession works, and Priya doesn't need those. What she needs is enough to understand why I disappeared and why I'm wearing a diamond and why I'm about to ask for two weeks off.
"Nick's uncle took me," I say. "It was a family dispute. A power struggle. He used me as leverage to try to force Nick to step aside. Nick got me out. His uncle won't be a problem anymore."
Priya absorbs this quickly, completely, filing the information into the appropriate category without visible reaction.
"Won't be a problem anymore," she repeats. Neutral.
"No."
She looks at me for a beat. Then she nods, once, and moves on. Priya has always known what questions to ask and what questions to leave alone. It's one of the reasons I like her.
"And the ring?"
"He proposed the night he brought me home." I look down at it. The oval diamond on my finger, his mother's platinum band. "We're getting married in ten days."
"Ten days."
"At St. Elias. It's a small ceremony. Family, a few of his people. I don't have a lot of guests on my side." I smile, and the smile is real, and the ache underneath it is real too. "I was hoping you'd be one of them."
Priya's eyes fill. She blinks fast, the way she does when a patient's chart shows something she wasn't prepared for, and she presses her lips together and nods.
