The weeks blurinto a pattern I didn’t expect and can’t quite name. Adrian rotates me between properties as threat assessments change, which means I’ve slept in four different beds in three weeks, each one temporarily mine and none of them home. The movement is annoying, but it’s justified. Grigor found digital traces showing Karpov is searching for Dominic’s archived recordings, which means he’ll also be looking for the physical hard drive.
I overheard Adrian telling Viktor that if Karpov recovers that drive, either the physical version or the digital version, he’ll get every file, including the ones that are currently fragmented, and the one from the night of the club. He said it with significance. He must have been referring to our private…meetingbefore Dominic’s death. Between Eric’s escalation andKarpov’s persistence, staying in one place too long risks both threats converging, so we move before it reaches us.
What I didn’t expect is how the danger would coexist with something resembling a routine. Adrian and I sleep together most nights. We eat together when his schedule allows, which is more often than I’d have guessed for a man managing a criminal organization under siege.
We argue about small things, like whether the coffee machine requires filtered water. He insists it does, but I’ve been using tap without telling him, and the espresso tastes exactly the same, and if I’m allowed to go for a run on the beach alone. I’m not, and the argument about it lasted longer than the run would have, but now he runs with me as Viktor and Fedor watch over us.
We also have one ongoing conversation neither of us can avoid, and it surfaces whenever the silence between operations stretches long enough for me to think about the future instead of surviving the present. “What happens if this doesn’t end quickly?” I ask him one evening at the Islamorada condo while we’re eating takeout at a kitchen counter that belongs to neither of us.
He sets down his fork. “I can keep you hidden as long as necessary.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.” I push aside my container. “I’m asking what happens to me. Not to the situation, the investigation, or Karpov. What happens to Aurora Moore? Because right now, I don’t exist. I don’t have a job, a home, or a phone number that belongs to me. I’m living in your properties, spending your money, and moving every time Viktor decides the perimeter is compromised. I’m in limbo.”
He doesn’t argue. He picks up his fork, eats another bite, and looks at me with an expression of deep listening. He’s not dismissing what I said. He’s working through it, and the response will come later, probably at a time I’m not expecting, in a form I didn’t predict.
“I’m not going to disappear into someone else’s life.” I say it firmly because the alternative is too close to what Eric did. “I need to understand where my own life is going, even if the answer is ‘I don’t know yet.’”
“I don’t know yet.” He says it without defensiveness. “I’m working on it.”
I nod, oddly satisfied. “That’s better than pretending you have it figured out.”
He arches a brow. “I never pretend that.”
“You always pretend that. You just do it convincingly. You’re certainly better at it than pretending to know how to ride a horse.” I steal a piece of his chicken because mine is gone, and he always orders too much.
He almost smiles, and the near-smile is the most reassuring thing he could offer because it means he heard me and isn’t going to insult me by arguing about the chicken or the point.
The symptoms startduring the second week of our moving around, just a couple of days after Marisol’s call. The nausea comes first as a low, persistent queasiness that greets me every morning and stays until noon. I blame the takeout. Then a bone-deep tiredness arrives that doesn’t respond to sleep, coffee,or the afternoon naps I’ve started taking without admitting to anyone that I need them. I fall asleep on the couch twice in one week and wake up with a blanket over me that I didn’t put there. Adrian doesn’t mention it. He just keeps buying saltines and plain crackers I can eat without my stomach revolting, and I pretend not to notice that the pantry is being stocked specifically around my nausea schedule.
On the third morning of vomiting instead of just queasiness, two weeks after the symptoms began, I call Marisol.
“You sound terrible,” she says immediately.
“I sound terrible because I just threw up for the third day in a row, and I can’t stay awake past two in the afternoon.”
Her tone changes to one of concern. “Have you eaten anything weird?”
“I’ve been eating the same takeout for weeks. Nothing has changed except that now I can’t keep it down.”
She pauses for two seconds, which means she’s already arrived at a conclusion and is deciding how to deliver it. “When was your last period?”
The question jolts me upright. I should have considered this already. I sit very still on the edge of the bed while trying to count backward, and the counting produces a number that makes the room tilt slightly.
“Aurora?”
“I’m doing the math.”
“Stop doing the math and go see a doctor.”
“I’m doing the math first.” I count again. It’s been eleven weeks since my last period, and nine weeks since the private room at Echelon, when Adrian and I had sex without protection because neither of us thought about it, and I never brought it up afterward because we were dealing with a dead body, a murder investigation, and a rival syndicate. Birth control somehow fell off the priority list alongside everything else that used to constitute my normal life.
“How late are you?” Marisol asks, and the concern in her voice has shifted from general worry to something more targeted.
“I don’t know exactly. Eleven weeks, I guess. I’ve been irregular since the stress started, and I assumed it was that.”
She speaks firmly now. “Stop assuming and see a doctor today. Not tomorrow, when it’s convenient, or after you’ve rationalized it into something less terrifying. Today.”
I agree, hang up a short time later, and sit on the bed for five minutes. I put my hand on my stomach without deciding to then pull it away because the gesture means something I’m not ready to confirm.
