She doesn’t ask again.
“You’re calmer in the dark,” she says instead.
I shift onto my back, the sheets rustling.
“The dark doesn’t ask anything from me,” I say.
“And the light does?”
“The light demands a performance.” My jaw tightens. “People need me to be what I am.”
“What do they want you to be?”
I exhale through my nose. “A weapon. A leader. TheJuggernaut.”
I hear her swallow. It’s soft, but it’s there.
“So what are you,” she asks, “when no one’s looking?”
The answer comes before I can stop it. “Awake.”
The mattress shifts. She settles back, finally still.
“I need you to know, I’m not afraid of you, Maksim Korsakov,” she says into the dark. “I just don’t like you.”
Something twists. Annoying. Unnecessary. I close my eyes.
“I don’t need you to.”
The silence after that doesn’t fade.
It stays.
***
She’s gone when I wake. Pillow barrier down. My shirt folded and placed in the spot she occupied.
The apartment is too quiet. No drip of coffee, no creak of floorboards, no scent of marshmallows clinging to the air like smoke.
She even took the rain with her.
I check my phone.
3:47 AM.
I scoff.
She walked out in the dark, through Bratva streets, and didn’t leave a trace. I should be impressed.
I’m not.
I shower.
I trace the knot of the sutures she left days ago with my thumb, the way her fingers moved, quick and cold, like she’d done it a hundred times.
She probably has.
I dress in black. Knife at my hip. Gun at my back. I grab my phone and text Vaska.
