“Elena.”
I stop because not stopping would be worse. I turn around, and he’s crossing the street toward me with his hands in his coat pockets and his face arranged into the expression I know best on him, warm and patient and completely certain of himself.
“I heard you were visiting,” he says. “I thought we could talk.”
“There is nothing to talk about.”
“You got married.” He stops a few feet away. Not close enough to be threatening. Close enough to be deliberate. “To a man you work for. Very suddenly. Without telling anyone.”
“I told the people I needed to tell.”
“Elena.” He says my name the way he has always said it, like it belongs to him. “Whatever this is, whatever arrangement you have walked into, it’s not too late to make a different choice.”
“I did not walk into an arrangement.”
“Roman Petrov is not a man who marries his secretary because he has feelings for her.” His voice stays even. Reasonable. “You know what he is. You have worked for him for two years. Whatever he has offered you, it comes with things he has not told you about yet, and by the time he does it will be too late to?—”
“Get back in your car,” I say.
He looks at me.
“Get back in your car, Aleksei.”
A beat. He looks at me with the expression that used to make me second-guess myself, patient and certain and faintly disappointed, and then he smiles once and takes a step back and says, “I’m just looking out for you,” and turns and walks back to his car.
I get into Viktor’s car.
I close the door.
Viktor pulls away from the curb and I look straight ahead, and I wait until we have turned the corner and my father’s street has disappeared behind us before I speak.
“Viktor.”
He meets my eyes in the rearview mirror.
“What happened outside stays between us,” I say.
He looks back at the road. “Of course, Mrs. Petrov.”
I look out the window.
Mrs. Petrov.
I am still getting used to that.
Roman is in the main room when I get back, standing at the window with his phone in his hand, and he looks up when I come in and waits while I take my coat off and put my bag down.
“How is he?” he says.
“Better. A lot better.” I sit on the arm of the sofa. “He wants to meet you. He said it’s past time.”
Something moves across Roman’s face. “Arrange it.”
“I will.” I pause. “He looks good, Roman. Really good. The difference from a month ago is—” I stop. “He looks good.”
Roman watches me. “That was all?”
I look at him across the room. His eyes are steady and dark, and he’s looking at me with the full quality of his attention, andI think about Aleksei’s voice saying it’s not too late to make a different choice, and Carla in the hallway ending her call when she heard my chair, and the three words I caught before she turned around.
