“It is.” The words leave me before I can stop them.
I go still.
A sick drop opens in my stomach. I just gave myself away. Now he knows I understand some Russian.
Vaska doesn’t react. Not visibly. He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t smile. Doesn’t give me anything at all.
“No,” he says. “That’s what heaskedfor.”
My pulse starts climbing.
“An obedient asset gives what shecan,not just what she’s asked for.” His gaze stays on my face. “If you were doing this clinically, Maksim would be bleeding from ten places instead of one.”
Heat crawls up the back of my neck.
Because he knows.
Not just about the ledgers.
About the meetings.
About every word I was never supposed to understand and did.
“You protected him where you could.”
I shake my head on instinct. “No.”
A lie.
Instant. Useless
Vaska doesn’t call it that. He just waits.
The room feels too hot. My skin feels too small. My face hurts and my wrists hurt and suddenly I am so, so tired of being looked at like someone can see straight through the walls I built around myself.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” I whisper.
That’s the closest I can get.
Vaska studies me for one long beat. Then he nods once, like that’s enough.
No absolution. No comfort. Just enough.
He closes the first aid kit. The snap of it makes me flinch. For a second neither of us move.
Then he stands.
My pulse jumps so hard it almost hurts.
That’s it, I think.
This is where he decides.
This is where the room I’m sitting in becomes the last one I ever see.
But Vaska only looks down at me and says, “Stay here.”
I stare up at him.
