Nadia watched me. “Is it over?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“The danger from Gennady is over. The debt is over. The Kask claim is broken. Petya is alive and guarded.” I threw the handkerchief onto the table. “The rest is rebuilding.”
She nodded slowly.
Then her knees softened.
I reached her before she could catch the chair. My hands closed around her waist.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You keep using that word badly.”
“I’m upright.”
“You were.”
She leaned into me then. Not because she lacked strength. Because she didn’t have to spend it pretending.
I gathered her against my chest and held her in the wreckage of my father’s room.
Her arms came around me beneath my jacket. She pressed her face to my shirt and breathed once, then again, each breath deeper than the one before.
“You stopped,” she said.
“When you told me to?”
“Yes.”
“I heard you.”
“I know. That’s why I’m saying it.”
I rested my cheek against her hair. It smelled like my shampoo, her skin, and the cold wind from outside. “I’ll always hear you.”
“Don’t make impossible promises.”
“I won’t always agree with you.”
She huffed against my chest.
“But I’ll hear you,” I said. “Even when I’m angry. Especially then.”
Her arms tightened.
I stayed there until the tension began to leave her shoulders.
Then I lifted her.
She made a startled sound and caught my lapels. “Vadim.”
“You’re upright again, but I prefer you carried.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
