"No."
A soft knock, and Irina came in without waiting for an answer, the way she never had with me either. She carried a tray — the soup, the good blue bowl, the chicken and dill he'd cleaned out twice in his first week here. She set it on the edge of the mattress, lowered herself down beside him, dipped the spoon, and lifted it to his mouth without a word.
Fin turned his face to the wall.
She held the spoon there for a moment. Then she set it down, reached out, and caught his cheek between two knuckles the way she'd done across my kitchen table the first morning, when he'd been a half-dead stranger eating like a man who'd forgotten he was allowed to. She said something low and fast in Russian. I caught maybe a third of it. Too thin. Something about his mother I wasn't going to translate, because he didn't need the words to get the shape of it.
He didn't move.
Irina looked at the bandaged hand resting over his heart, and her mouth went tight, and she said one more thing, quieter, not to him and not to me. Then she patted his cheek once, picked the tray back up, and carried it out. She'd be back in an hour. She'd been back every hour for four days. He hadn't taken a bite from her yet.
"She's worried about you," I said.
"Aleksi." He closed his eyes. "I'm no hungry."
I sighed. "You need to eat, or your blood sugar will tank."
"When's yer boss sending me back?"
I frowned. "Back where?"
"Wherever ye keep the ones ye're done with." He turned those flat, empty eyes on me again. "I'm no use to ye now. A leatherworker's only as good as his hands, aye? And mine'sno good anymore." He worked his thumb against the bandage where the rest of the finger should've been. "Cannae feel the grain right wi' it gone. Cannae trust the hand to hold a line. So I'm asking ye plain. When?"
I squeezed the empty glass the whole time he talked, hard enough that my hand ached. I set it down before I cracked it.
"Nobody's sending you anywhere," I said. "You hear me? Nobody puts a hand on you again. Not while I'm breathing."
"Why?" he asked.
He might as well have slapped me. "Why, what?"
"The way ye talk. As if ye'd put yerself between me and your own men if they came for me. But we both know the truth. You wouldn't, would ye?"
"Fin—"
"I don't blame ye," he said, closing his eyes. "If yer holdin' me here and carin' for me out of some sense of obligation, don't. I know I'm nothing to ye."
"What did you want me to do, Fin? Shoot Nikita? He's—"
His eyes snapped open, but this time some of the old fire had returned. "I just said I don't blame ye, didn't I? I don't want nothing from ye. Ye did me no wrong. Ye did as a vor should. I expect no less."
"You're going to eat," I said.
"I told ye, I'm no—"
"I'm going to make you a sandwich. And if you don't fucking eat it, I'm going to strain that soup, get a funnel, tie you to this bed, and pour it down your throat myself. You understand me?"
The silence stretched out long enough that I figured I'd misjudged it, pushed too hard, and I was already turning for the door.
"Dinnae promise me a good time wi' rope," he said, weak and hoarse, to the ceiling, "if ye don't intend to deliver."
I stopped.
There it was. Faint, half-dead, but his, mouth I'd been missing so bad I hadn't let myself name it. Four days I'd have given anything to hear him be a little shit again. I wasn't about to let him see that.
I turned around in the doorway.
"You want to play with rope?" I said. "Get the fuck out of my bed and get some sunlight. Shower. Eat a real meal. Then we'll talk about the rope."
