He has until tonight.
UNKNOWN:
Debt plus loss. Or I collect differently.
Nadia read them once more.
The color left her face, but she didn’t step back.
My shirt hung open where she’d unbuttoned it. Her mouth was swollen from mine. The room still carried the heat of the choice she’d given me with both eyes open. She’d chosen to be my wife without surrendering herself, and Gennady Kask had mistaken that choice for a new weakness.
I took the phone from Nadia before her grip could bruise her palm. “Tell me exactly where Petya is now.”
“Your men moved him seventeen minutes before the photograph arrived,” Lev said from the doorway. His voicestayed low. “The first guard checked in from the old site. The second location is clean, and Petya is under your protection.”
“Who sold Gennady the first address?”
“An old Kask gambling-room contact watched the street outside the first building and sent the photograph before he knew Petya had already been moved.”
“Bring the contact to me.”
“I’ll have him brought in.”
Nadia turned her head toward me. “You’re not doing that without me.”
I looked at her.
She stood with one hand braced against the doorframe and the other closed in the deep blue silk at her waist. The robe covered her from throat to mid-calf, but nothing about her looked hidden.
“You’re not handling this in a room where I don’t get a voice,” she said.
I held the phone at my side and watched the pulse beat hard at the base of her throat.
Gennady had put fear in her face.
He hadn’t put obedience there.
“Come here,” I said.
Her chin lifted. “That sounded like you were about to kiss me quiet.”
“If I wanted you quiet, I would’ve chosen the wrong woman.” I set the phone on the dresser and held out my hand. “Come here because I want you close when we decide what happens next.”
Nadia crossed the carpet without hurry. The robe brushed her calves, and the loose belt shifted where her fingers had knotted it too tight. She stopped within reach but didn’t put her hand in mine.
“You’re angry,” she said.
“I am.”
“At me?”
“No.”
“At Petya?”
“Petya is alive because you loved him enough to make terrible choices, and because I ordered my men to move him before Kask’s filth got close enough to touch him.” I kept my hand open between us. “Petya’s debt, his lying, and his pride will be dealt with, but Gennady comes first.”
Her lashes flickered once.
