Page 235 of Sexting His Assistant

We both notice it.

The room becomes very quiet.

Luka speaks first. “Is that what I’m?”

My heart starts beating fast.

I look at the laptop because the laptop has never asked me difficult emotional questions while looking like a dangerous older man who ate me out in a guest room to make me sleep.

“I don’t know,” I say.

Luka says, “All right.”

I look up. “That’s it?”

Luka says, “I’m learning not to demand answers from injured women.”

I almost smile, but then sadness catches me before humor can.“I don’t know what I’m allowed to want.”

His face changes. He leans forward slightly. “Allowed by whom?”

“Myself,” I say. “My brother. The office. Your life. Your mother’s terrifying slippers.”

His mouth moves faintly. “The slippers have no authority.”

“They have presence,” I say.

He watches me, and something in his expression softens so much that I have to look away.

I’m saved by a knock.

Pavel appears in the doorway, his face unreadable. “Boss.”

Luka’s face changes at once.

The man sitting across from me, the one who had been talking about my job and my wants and whether he counted as my boyfriend, disappears behind something harder.

“What?” Luka asks.

Pavel’s eyes flick to me, then back to Luka. “The prisoner is talking now.”

I go still. For one second, I don’t understand.

Then I remember.

The man in my apartment. The man who hit me from behind. The man Luka found there.

I had almost forgotten about him.

Not completely. That would be impossible. But I had pushed him into the back of my head because Misha was missing, because Alina had vanished, because my apartment had been destroyed and my life had become too crowded with fear to hold every piece at the front.

My hand moves to the back of my head before I can stop it.

Luka notices. His face darkens.

“He’s here?” I ask.

Neither man answers fast enough.