The problem is that I can’t fuck her.
Not won’t.Can’t.Because fucking Elizabeth Calloway would require a kind of trust I haven’t been able to build yet, and may never.
She carries a debt. A significant one, large enough to have driven her to my doorstep, large enough to keep her here month after month, depositing payments to a man she despises. And as long as that debt exists, I can’t separate what she does from why she does it.
So, I hold the line.
Still, part of me hopes she breaks a rule. Crosses a boundary. Gives me a reason.
A reason to touch her again.
21
ELLIE
It’s Thursday afternoon, post-lessons. Anya is napping, and I have two unstructured hours that I haven’t figured out what to do with.
I go to the staff kitchen, a huge room on the ground floor near the service entrance that I’ve only been in twice. I want coffee. I want to read my book and do ordinary stuff in an ordinary space without analyzing it.
The staff kitchen is warm, and garlic and herbs linger in the air from lunch service. I’m already reaching for a mug when I register that I’m not alone.
Dmitri is sitting at the small table in the corner.
He has a coffee in front of him as he stares at his phone. He looks up when I come in, and his expression communicates profound personal inconvenience caused by my existence.
“Oh,” I say. “Hi.”
He looks back at his phone.
This is, by Dmitri’s standards, an effusive greeting.
I pour my coffee, debate leaving, and decide not to.
He looks up again.
“I keep running into you in unexpected places,” I observe.
Nothing.
“Well. Not unexpected, exactly.” I wrap my hands around the mug. “You live here. You’re allowed to drink coffee. I’m just — I thought you’d be driving. Or guarding. Or doing whatever it is you do when you’re not doing those things.”
He puts his phone down on the table and looks at me with the expression of a man who is performing patience as an act of profound will.
“What do you do,” I ask, “besides drive? For Rolan.”
The name lands in the room. His jaw shifts.
“I can’t discuss that with you, Miss Calloway.”
A full sentence. With a subject, verb, and object. An unprecedented response.
I feel genuinely encouraged.
“Right, but in general terms, are you security? Are you, I don’t know, a general?—”
“That’s classified information, Miss.”
I wrap my hands tighter around the mug. “Can I ask you something completely unrelated, then?”
