That makes his eyes settle on me properly.
“Throughme.” The repetition is quiet. Dangerous in a way I can’t name.
I nod once.
“Yes.”
His expression doesn’t change. “How?”
“He wanted me to get close to you,” I say. “Get the job. Stay useful. Listen. Find out what moved through Smash and Sugar, what names touched it, where the weak points were.”
His mouth hardens a fraction. “But you didn’t get the job that day.”
“No.”
“What happened?”
I let out a breath that almost trembles. Hate that too.
“Maksim stole my car,” I say. “With me in it.”
For the first time, something almost human flickers at the corner of Vaska’s mouth.
Not amusement exactly. Recognition, maybe. Like of course that’s how it happened. Of course Maksim didn’t enter my life like a normal man.
“And then,” he says.
“And then Maksim just happened to me,” I answer.
That pulls the room quieter.
Vaska leans back slightly, forearms braced on his knees now, attention fixed on me with that same unbearable stillness.
“And Gabriel adjusted.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He stopped caring how it started,” I say. “Once I was close enough to Maksim, that was all that mattered.”
Vaska nods once. “Why tell Maksim now?”
Because Gabriel already had the ledgers, sits right at the front of my mouth.
But it’s uglier than that. More tangled.
Because Santo saw me. Because the walls were closing in. Because I was dead either way. Because I couldn’t keep lying to him with his name etched in my skin.
“Gabriel got the ledgers,” I say.
Vaska doesn’t move. “From you.”
“Yes.”
“Why take them?”
This time I answer faster. “Because Santo saw me.”
