Page 124 of Sexting His Assistant

I can tell she’s disappointed but I have to leave for my own sanity.

I start the engine.

Then I see him.

Misha.

He’s across the street, getting out of a dark sedan that is not his.

My hand stills on the gear shift.

The car is pulled close to the opposite curb, engine still running. Tinted windows. Dark paint. No visible damage except a small dent near the left taillight. The kind of car chosen by men who don’t want to be remembered.

Misha steps out quickly, checking both sides of the street before he briskly walks away.

His shoulders are tense, his jaw locked, and even from inside my car, even through the glass and distance, I can see the distress on him.

Most people would miss it. I don’t.

I have known Misha too long. I know the difference between his temper and his fear.

My frown deepens.

Misha does not frighten easily. He gets angry. He gets violent. He gets overprotective to the point of madness. But fear, real fear, takes something larger.

The sedan waits a few seconds after he closes the door.

Then it pulls away from the curb.

I lift my phone and take a picture of the rear plate through the windshield.

Once. Then again as the car moves.

I take one more photo as it turns at the end of the street, catching the rear window and a partial reflection of the driver in the side mirror.

The car disappears.

Misha crosses toward Nina’s building without looking back.

I remain still.

The sensible thing would be to call him.

But if Misha sees me sitting outside Nina’s building at this hour, dressed in the same clothes I wore yesterday, with my shirt still crooked and her mouth still on mine, there will be no conversation.

I let him enter the building.

Then I look down at the photo again.

Something is wrong. First that video, now this?

Too many pieces are moving at once.

And I don’t believe in coincidence.

I put the car into gear and pull away from the curb before Misha can look out a window and see me.

The drive home takes longer than it should. Morning traffic moves slowly, and every delay makes my pain worse, the kind of deep, pulsing pain that tells me Doctor Mirov would call me an idiot in three languages if he saw me driving.