"So if I want justice for my mother, I need you. The Syndicate."
A direct question gets a direct answer. "Yes."
She's quiet again. Her finger traces the edge of Catherine's medical records, following the typeface, the cold clinical language that reduced her mother's suffering to symptoms and prescriptions and a date of death.
"You could leave." The words cost me everything. Each syllable is a blade I'm swallowing, sharp edges scraping the inside of my chest. "Right now. I'll give you money. A new identity. A flight to anywhere in the world. You can disappear. Write your story from somewhere safe. Expose whoever you want."
Her eyes snap to mine. "Including you?"
"Including me."
The kitchen goes absolutely still. Even the refrigerator seems to hold its breath.
"You'd let me destroy you?" Her voice is barely audible, the words shaped more by her lips than by sound.
"If that's what you need. Yes."
"Why?"
The question strips me bare. There is nowhere left to hide. No strategy, no deflection, no silence I can weaponize. She's asking me to step into the open, unarmed, and let her see exactly what I am.
"Because I love you."
The words fall out in English. Not Russian, where they'd be safe, where they could hide behind a language she doesn't speak. English. Clear. Undeniable. My accent wraps around each word, thickening the vowels, reshaping the consonants, but the meaning is unmistakable.
"Because what I want stopped mattering the first time you fell asleep in my arms." My voice is rough, fractured, coming from a place beneath the scars and the ink and the decades of violence that have defined my existence. "Because if destroying me is what gives you peace, then hand me the matches and I'll help you light the fire."
Her breath catches. A sharp, audible intake that lifts her shoulders and parts her lips. Her eyes go wide, the swollen redness from crying making the blue look brighter, more vivid, achingly exposed.
"You love me." She says it slowly, testing the shape of it, turning it over the way she turned over the wordfreedomyesterday.
"I love you."
"You've known me for two weeks."
"I've known you long enough and you haven't killed me in my sleep. That makes you my soulmate."
She stands. The chair scrapes against the concrete. I brace for her to walk away, to take the out I offered, to disappear from my life and leave me in the hollow shell of a building that will never stop smelling like her.
She doesn't walk away.
She walks toward me. Each step deliberate, her bare feet silent on the cold floor, her eyes locked on mine with an intensity that pins me to my chair. She stops in front of me and looks down with those wrecked blue eyes, and the expression on her face dissolves the last fortified wall I've spent a lifetime building.
"I should leave." Her voice trembles. "It's the smart move. Take your money. Disappear. Write my story. Forget any of this happened."
"Da."
"I'm not going to do that."
My heart stops. Stutters. Restarts with a force that makes my vision blur.
"Why?"
"Because I'm not staying for the mission." Her hands find my face, her palms warm against my jaw, her thumbs tracing the hard lines, and the scar tissue. "Not for justice. Not for my mother." Her voice breaks on the last word and she swallows hard, her throat working, her eyes glistening. "I'm staying for you."
I pull her into my lap. She comes without resistance, straddling me, her forehead dropping to mine, her breath warm and unsteady against my lips. I hold her face the way she's holding mine, my scarred hands against her soft skin, and for a long moment we just breathe. Together. In the quiet kitchen. With the truth finally, completely, between us.
I cross to my desk. Open the drawer she found last night. Pull out a small black drive.
