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“Don’t get sentimental about it,” I tell him. “I live here too.”

The corner of his mouth moves. “Da,” he says. “You do.”

We sit with that for a moment, the tray between us, the bare garden outside, the city beyond it going about its business. Then he says, “Walk with me,” and I open my mouth to list the reasons why not, but he’s already pushing the sheet back.

I get around the bed to his side, and he takes my hand to stand, his jaw tightening for one second as he gets his weight under him, and then he’s upright, his jaw releases, and he reaches for his coat on the chair. I hold it open, and he gets his arms in. We go downstairs together, his hand finding the small of my back on the stairs, steadying himself through me without saying so.

Outside the air bites, cold and clean, salt coming off the waterfront. He breathes it in, and I watch the set of his shoulders ease on the exhale, the vigilance dropping out of them for a few seconds before it comes back. We start along the gravel path that runs the inner edge of the garden wall, the house on one side, the garden on the other, the late-winter skyline sitting above the roofline in flat pale light.

He takes my hand, fingers laced through mine, and we walk.

I’ve been letting myself have the small things lately. His hand in mine on the path. The way he calls me Zayka. The fact that he asked me to read to him on the third night when he couldn’t sleep.

“The shell company filings,” he says.

“Can wait until you’re cleared for desk work.”

“I’m cleared.”

“The surgeon said two more days.”

“The surgeon hasn’t run a Bratva operation.”

“The surgeon also wasn’t stabbed,” I say, “so his opinion on recovery timelines carries more authority than yours right now.”

He makes a sound that concedes nothing, and we keep walking.

A robin drops onto the garden wall ahead of us and sits there, head tilted, considering us with one bright eye before deciding we’re beneath its interest and leaving. My father collected moments like that, small unremarkable ones, a bird on a wall, the slant of afternoon light through the window, the texture of a silence that meant the other person was thinking rather than ignoring you. He kept a running private account of them that I only ever got pieces of. I used to find it charming and occasionally maddening, and I find myself doing it now, turning the robin over, keeping it. I don’t know if that’s grief or inheritance. Probably both.

“You’ve gone quiet,” Volkov says.

“My father liked birds,” I say. “That robin.”

He walks three steps. “Lavro had a feeder outside his window at the estate. Filled it himself, every week.” His thumb moves once across my knuckles. “I gave him hell for it. Starlings kept coming instead of whatever he was trying to attract. He said starlings counted.”

I squeeze his hand. He squeezes back, once, and we finish the circuit in comfortable silence.

We’re halfway through the second pass when the garden gate opens.

Adrianos comes through it, coat buttoned against the cold, his eyes going to Volkov upright and walking. He falls into step on Volkov’s other side without being asked, matching our pace. I’ve seen enough of him now to read the tightness at the corners of his mouth that his expression hasn’t fully covered.

“You look better than I expected,” he says to Volkov.

“You keep saying that.”

“I keep meaning it.” Adrianos glances across at me. “Mrs. Nazarov. Good work.”

“He did most of it himself,” I say. “Sheer stubbornness.”

“Runs in the organization,” Adrianos says it without looking at either of us, eyes on the path. The charm is at half its usual strength, which on Adrianos means something is pressing against it from the inside.

We walk the turn at the far end of the garden. The gravel is loud underfoot. A gust comes through the bare branches and Volkov’s grip tightens briefly against the cold. I squeeze back.

“You didn’t come to check on me,” Volkov says.

“No,” Adrianos says. “Though I’m glad to see you walking.” He reaches into his coat. “My forensic accountant, Kalliopi, she’s been pulling the original shell registration apart for weeks.” His voice stays easy, but his eyes don’t. “She found a lead. A real one.” He produces a folded page and holds it out. “Kalliopi doesn’t bring me things she isn’t certain of.”

He holds it out across me to Volkov. Volkov takes it with his free hand, reads it, and goes still beside me, his thumb stopping against my knuckles. I don’t look at the page. I’ll see it in ten minutes when we’re inside, and he puts it on the desk between us.