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“Arina.”

Garick's voice comes from the doorway. Low and steady.

I don't turn around. I keep looking at my coat.

“Andrei's staying here tonight,” he says. “Dr. Petrenko will call if anything changes. Two of your men are outside.”

My men. Not my father’s men.

“We should go,” he adds.

“Okay,” I say, but still don't move.

A hand settles on the small of my back. Warm, even through the coat. It doesn't push. It just stays there until I remember how my feet work.

***

It's after midnight when Garick pulls out of the clinic's parking lot.

The city's empty, wet streets shine orange under the lamps. The heater's on high. I've stopped shaking, which is something, but I keep looking at my hands in my lap and thinking about how much blood there was. Nobody tells you that. In films, it's a thin red line and a quiet fall.

It wasn't quiet.

“Rusakov will have Volkov by now,” I say.

“Timur dropped him off an hour ago. On the front steps of his club.”

“Did anyone see?” I ask.

“Everyone saw. That was the point.”

I nod. That was the point. I made it. Now I have to live with it.

The car turns left at the river instead of right.

“This isn't the way home,” I say.

“Your father's house has four of my men on it and four of Timur's. Your sisters are asleep. Nobody's getting in.” He keeps his eyes on the road. “But Rusakov just had a corpse delivered to his front door with your name on it, and that house is the first place he'll look for you.”

I should argue. I'm Arina Maximova. I don't get taken places I don’t ask to go to.

But I think about walking into Papa's house like this. About Milana coming down the stairs in her pajamas because she heard the door, and seeing the front of my coat. About Galana's face.

“Fine,” I say.

His apartment looks different, or maybe I'm just looking at it differently now I've stood in a yard and watched him break a man's fingers one at a time, like he was counting.

He drops his keys on the kitchen counter. Takes off his coat. Then he turns to me and holds out his hand.

“Coat.”

I look down at it again. “I'll take it home and...”

“Arina.” Gently. “Give me the coat.”

I shrug out of it. He takes it without looking at the stain and folds it over his arm like it's any other coat.

“The dress too,” he says. “When you're out of the shower.”