Page 83

His hand fell from my face. Hurt entered his eyes before he turned toward the opposite window, but I had already seen it.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Do not apologize.” His voice had become controlled again. “You told me the truth before I touched you.”

“I didn’t stop you.”

“That is not the same as wanting me.” He looked down at his hands. “I knew better.”

“Why did you do it?”

“Because knowing the answer did not stop me from asking the question once.” A bitter edge entered his voice. “Now I will not need to ask again.”

The finality wounded me somewhere beyond romance. Rurik had become important in the months we’d spent hiding—not as Salvatore’s replacement, but as proof that I could still trust the living with pieces of myself. Losing that frightened me more than I wanted him to know.

I reached for his hand, but he moved it before I could touch him.

“I don’t want this to destroy what we have,” I said.

“What do we have, Madigan?”

“I don’t know.” I swallowed past the ache in my throat. “But it matters to me.”

Rurik closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, the hurt had been placed behind every defense he possessed.

“It matters to me too,” he said. “That is the problem.”

He opened the door and stepped into the garage. Cold air entered the car before the door closed behind him, leaving me alone with Salvatore’s authorization and the proof that grief could wound more than one man at a time.

Rurik did not mention the kiss after that night. Neither did I.

For days, we moved carefully around each other inside the safe house. He still checked the perimeter before dawn and left the secure phone beside my tea. I still told him when I planned to call Mom or Cian. Neither of us mentioned the kiss, but silence began arranging the room before either of us entered it.

The distance between us was never cruel. That would have been easier. Rurik remained patient, attentive, and unfailingly protective, but the quiet companionship we had built acquired boundaries neither of us crossed.

Reagan’s authorization remained locked with Salvatore’s files while we waited for another path to open. Rurik spoke to Maxim, Vladmir, and Sinclair, but no lead surfaced. I read the documents until every date and signature felt carved into me. The Society did not shrink. The cage only became familiar.

Outside, the rain stopped. The trees surrounding the house lost more leaves each night, and autumn settled across the road in damp shades of copper and brown.

Nearly two weeks passed without another answer. For the first time since I began following Salvatore’s investigation, the truth made us wait.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

By the third week after our visit to the Red Duck, silence had become another form of surveillance.

No one followed us through the city. No unfamiliar vehicle appeared twice on the road leading to the safe house. The security system remained quiet, the guards beyond the tree line reported nothing, and every call Rurik received ended with the same absence of news.

I didn’t mistake that for safety.

The Society had survived too long to react emotionally. It didn’t rush because someone uncovered a document or spoke a forbidden name. It watched, measured, and waited until fear made its target careless. Reagan had confirmed I was following Salvatore’s investigation. If she knew, others would know soon enough. My name might not have appeared beneath the word containment yet, but somewhere, a space had already been left for it. Rurik understood that too. He changed the security codes twice after we returned from Chinatown. Vladmir began using different vehicles for every delivery, and the guards rotated at irregular hours instead of following the schedule I had memorized. Rurik’s calls with Maxim grew shorter. Whatever they discussed happened in clipped Russian spoken too quietly for words to pass through the walls.

He never told me the Society was looking for me.

He didn’t need to.

The kiss remained between us without being named. We moved around it carefully, the way people crossed a room scattered with broken glass. Rurik never touched me. He gave me more room at the table, knocked before entering any room I occupied, and kept his gaze from my mouth with such deliberate control that restraint became another confession. I didn’t know how to apologize for failing to return something I had never offered.

He had known before kissing me. That didn’t mean knowing had protected him from the answer.