Chapter 16
Kit
I didn’t sleep after Ivan Morozov told me the Orlovs had my name.
That seemed worth noting, if only because sleep had already been more of a polite rumor than a habit lately. Still, there was a difference between refusing sleep because work had its teeth in you and lying in bed while every sound in your apartment became part of a potential threat.
The radiator hissed and a pipe knocked in the wall. Someone coughed in the hallway. A car idled too long beneath my window, then left before I could decide whether to hate it personally or professionally.
By five, I had stopped pretending I was resting and had moved to the couch with my back to the brick wall, laptop closed on the coffee table because Ivan’s warning had done exactly what a good warning was supposed to do.
It made touching the Orlov file feel less like work and more like sticking my hand into a machine while the gears were still moving.
I hated that.
I hated that I had listened.
Mostly, I hated that he had been right about why I wouldn’t want to.
Fear made me want more information. Information made me feel less helpless. Helplessness made my skin feel too tight, like I needed to claw my way out of my own body before someone else got to me first.
So I sat still, which was its own kind of violence.
My apartment looked exactly the same as it always did, which had started to feel personally offensive. It was quiet too. Too quiet. Ivan’s voice kept moving through the room even though the call had ended hours ago.
It also did other things and that was the real problem. My body had become a traitor with terrible judgment and apparently a deep interest in Russian men who said ‘consequences’ like it meant something more specific than punishment and less simple than sex.
I tried not to think about his voice.
That worked for approximately nine seconds.
Then I thought about his hand. Not even his hand doing anything useful or dramatic. Just his hand on his coffee cup at the café. He had touched nothing unnecessarily, which made the idea of him touching me feel like it would be deliberate enough to ruin my life.
Completely unacceptable.
I got up, paced the apartment, checked the hallway feed, checked the window, checked the lock, then went into the bathroom because apparently my options had narrowed to ‘spiral on couch’ or ‘spiral somewhere with tile.’
The mirror over the sink reflected a woman who looked like she’d been professionally haunted. Pale face. Dark hair loose around my shoulders. Eyes bloodshot. Mouth set in the particular line that meant I was very close to making either an excellent decision or a catastrophic one.
I turned the shower on hot.
The bathroom filled with heat and white mist, softening the hard edges of the mirror, the sink, the tile, the woman standing there pretending she wasn’t thinking about Ivan Morozov telling her not to test consequences tonight.
Tonight was over.
Technically.
I stripped and stepped under the water. The heat hit my shoulders, and I exhaled harder than I meant to.
My muscles were tight from hours of stillness, from holding myself like if I relaxed, I would miss the exact second danger arrived.
Water slid down the back of my neck, over my spine, between my shoulder blades, and I braced one hand against the tile.
Do not think about him.
Naturally, I thought about him. Ivan standing in my doorway, maybe.
Ivan with those pale eyes behind his glasses, looking at me like every argument I made had already been read, annotated, and returned with corrections.
Ivan’s voice lowering when he said my name.
Ivan saying good girl in a tone that had no business making my thighs clench.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
My hand moved before I’d decided to let it, and I wasn’t proud of what happened next, or the name I moaned when it was over.
“Great,” I muttered. “Fantastic work, Calloway.”
The mirror was completely fogged by the time I got out. I wiped a hand across it and stared at my reflection.
Still haunted.
Now annoyed too.
An improvement, arguably.
I dressed in black leggings, a soft gray sweater, and black combat boots. I pulled my hair up, then took it down, then pulled it up again because indecision was for people without coffee and I was technically one of them.
My phone rang at eight-oh-six. It was Ivan.
My pulse spiked stupidly. I let it ring twice before answering because there was no reason to let him think I was waiting for his call.
“Morozov,” I said.
“Kit.”
My name in his mouth was going to be a problem. Actually, it already was.
“You owe me a real conversation,” I said.
There was no hesitation.
“Yes. I do.”
His answer was unexpected enough that I went still.
I had prepared for deflection. For another partial answer.
For some calm, infuriating explanation about operational timing and limited windows and why I should trust him despite the fact that men who asked for trust usually meant they wanted obedience with better branding.
Instead, he agreed and I didn’t really know what to do with that.
“Good,” I said. “Then start talking.”
“Come out of your building.”
My eyes moved to the window.
“What?”
“I’m outside.”
Of course he was.
I crossed the apartment and stood just to the side of the glass, where I could see down without making myself fully visible.
A black car waited across the street, not directly in front of my building but close enough to make a statement.
Ivan stood beside it in a dark coat, one hand in his pocket, his head tilted slightly as though he already knew exactly where I would appear behind the window. He was looking up at me.
“Absolutely not,” I said.
“You need to leave the apartment.”
“I need several things, like full night’s sleep and a better super and some sort of legal framework for punching men who speak in commands. Leaving my apartment with a Bratva stranger does not make the list.”
“You know I’m not a stranger.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It was not meant to be.”
I pressed my forehead lightly against the wall beside the window and closed my eyes for half a second.
Mistake.
Behind my eyelids, I saw his hand on my chin.
I opened them in a hurry.
“Why am I leaving?” I asked.
“Because you’re in too much danger right now for you to leave my sight.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“How long?” I asked.
“Less than I hoped.”
“Specifics, Ivan.”
“Hours.”
His response moved through the room like smoke. I looked at my apartment, my desk, my computers, my board, my controlled little world arranged with enough paranoia to make most people tired. Everything I owned that mattered was here. Leaving felt wrong, but staying felt worse.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
“Somewhere controlled.”
“No.”
“Somewhere Morozov-controlled,” he amended.
“That did not improve the sentence.”
“It improved the accuracy.”
“Do you always choose accuracy over comfort?”
“With you? Yes.”
My throat went dry for no reason that deserved attention. I looked down at him again. He stood very still beside the car, not pacing, not checking his phone, not looking up too often. He looked like a man who could wait forever if waiting got him what he wanted. That should have scared me.
It did.
It also did that other thing too and I would deny that to my grave.
“You are under my protection now,” he said. “Call it custody if that makes you angrier. But you are coming with me with me whether you like it or not.”
The word custody hit low and hot and absolutely unacceptable.
My body, the idiot, liked it.
My brain immediately filed an objection.
“Your custody,” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“You understand I am not evidence in a police procedural.”
“You are much harder to manage than evidence.”
“Correct.”
“And much more valuable.”
That stopped me. Not because it was romantic. It wasn’t. Ivan made valuable sound like someone important he would defend with knives and mathematics.
“I don’t belong to you,” I said.
The silence on the line was tense for a long moment. When he answered, his voice was lower.
“Not yet.”
Every inch of me went still.
“Ivan,” I warned.
“Come downstairs, Kit.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I come up.”
My pulse slammed once.
“Are you threatening me?”
“No.”
“What do you call that?”
“A statement of logistics.”
I almost laughed. I didn’t, though, because rewarding him felt dangerous.
“I have questions,” I said.
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
“No.”
“I have gear.”
“Pack what you can carry in one bag. Your laptop. Essential drives. ID. Medication if any. No more than five minutes.”
“You’ve thought this through.”
“Yes.”
“Of course you have.”
“Four minutes now.”
I hung up on him. It was petty. It felt good though.
Then I moved, but not because he told me to. That was very important. I moved because my own instincts were screaming that staying in the apartment was no longer safe, only familiarity wearing a mask.
I packed one bag, with my laptop, two encrypted drives, a burner phone, my wallet, and my passport. I packed a lockpick set because irony was alive and well. At the last minute, I stuffed in a knife, charger, a sweater, and the cold case file on Daniel.
I stared at that blue folder for one second too long before sliding it into the bag. Bringing it was non-negotiable.
I took one last look at the apartment. Everything looked normal and that made me want to scream.
I locked the door behind me and left my apartment. Downstairs, the lobby smelled like old mail and floor cleaner. The repaired front light glowed outside the glass. The camera Ivan may or may not have had corrected stared down at the entrance, its angle perfect.
Of course.
I opened the door.
Ivan stood beside the black car. He was lean, but there was nothing soft about him and the fact that he was still plenty bigger than me hit me right in the uterus.
I stared at his dark coat, trying to distract myself.
He was wearing a dark suit beneath it. Glasses.
Pale eyes that caught me immediately and did not move away.