I want him on his knees. I want his teeth in my sink. I want to tear his throat out with my hands and let him drown on the floor.
Instead I ask, “And?”
Vaska’s eyes stay on mine. “She wasn’t sent for you.”
That gets my attention fast.
“What?”
“Smash and Sugar.” His voice stays level. “Throughme.She was supposed to get close to me. Be useful. Get information on imports. Then you happened.”
I laugh once. It sounds wrong. All venom. Sent to beVaska’s.That doesn’t sit well.
“So I fucked up your possible little romance.”
Vaska ignores that.
“Kaya adjusted when she got close enough to you.”
My hand curls into a fist.
Of course he did.
Of course the minute she got near me, the whole thing changed shape. Because that’s what happens when I want something. It rots in my hands. Gets used. Gets blood on it.
“She stole the ledgers,” I say.
“Yes.”
“She lied.”
“Yes.”
The word cracks something open in my chest all over again.
I look away first. Down the hall. At the filthy carpet. At nothing.
“Did she give him anything else?”
Vaska is quiet for half a beat.
“Did you know she understands Russian?”
Everything in me goes still.
No.
No, she doesn’t.
I look at him. “What?”
“She understands it,” he says. “Enough.”
The hallway narrows.
Every meeting she sat through. Every time I spoke in front of her assuming language was a locked door. Every muttered thing in bed, half asleep, half hard, not careful enough because I thought she couldn’t follow.
My stomach turns vicious and cold.
