Her mouth tightened, but not in anger at me. “He was trying.”
“I know.”
“He’ll hate you.”
“For taking you?”
“For existing near this.”
“That is fair.”
Her fingers moved over the edge of the sheet. “I don’t know what I feel.”
“You don’t have to know tonight.”
“You keep giving me permission for things I didn’t ask permission for.”
“I’m trying to give back pieces of a night that took too many.”
Her eyes lifted.
The words sat there, plain and too close to soft.
My phone vibrated on the nightstand.
Nadia flinched.
So did the fragile quiet between us.
I picked it up because leaving it would not make the world kinder.
Lev’s name lit the screen.
I answered. “Speak.”
“Kask’s uncle has called your father’s house twice,” Lev said. “The second call reached Mrs. Sorin.”
I stood.
Nadia watched me from the bed, sheet clutched in one hand, my shirt open at her throat.
“What did Galina say?” I asked.
“That you’re unavailable until you decide otherwise.”
My mouth nearly curved. “Good.”
“There’s more. Gennady is telling his people you stole paid property from a sanctioned room.”
Nadia went very still.
I looked at her as Lev spoke again.
“And one Kask car just turned onto Nadia’s block.”
Her face changed before I said a word. She knew. Some part of her understood from the set of my shoulders, from the silence after Lev’s last sentence.
“Petya?” she asked.
