Chapter 6 - Keira
I almost referred him out on Monday.
I sat at my desk with my laptop open, cursor hovering over an email to David Chen—a colleague who specialized in high-functioning professionals with sleep disorders.
David was good. Thorough. He had a waiting list three months long, but he owed me a favor from a case consultation last year.
One email, and Rodion Zelenov would be his problem instead of mine.
I typed the first line. David, I have a patient I'd like to refer to you.
Then I deleted it. Typed it again. Deleted it again.
Just send it. This is the professional thing to do. The ethical thing.
My fingers wouldn't move.
I closed the laptop and told myself I'd do it tomorrow. I didn't believe me.
The week crawled by with agonizing slowness.
I saw my regular patients—the hedge fund manager, the anxious attorney, the tech executive who couldn't stop working long enough to notice his marriage was falling apart—and I listened, and I asked questions, and I did my job.
But part of my mind was always somewhere else.
Replaying Thursday's session. Analyzing every word, every pause, every moment, his mask had slipped and shown me something real.
I've been thinking about you.
I shouldn't have let him say that. Should have redirected immediately, reminded him of the professional nature of our relationship, shut it down before it became something I couldn't control.
Instead, I'd sat there and let the words hang in the air, let myself feel the pull of them, let myself wonder what it would be like to say them back.
Unprofessional. Dangerous. Stupid.
I knew better. I'd been trained better. And yet here I was, counting the days until Thursday like a teenager waiting for a date.
Wednesday evening, I called Amber.
She answered on the third ring, her voice warm and slightly breathless. "Keira! Oh my God, it's been forever. Hold on, let me—" A muffled sound, a door closing. "Sorry, I was just putting Lily down. She's teething, and it's a nightmare. How are you?"
Amber Lewis had been my closest friend in grad school.
We'd suffered through statistics together, celebrated our dissertations together, promised to stay in touch when we scattered to opposite coasts.
She'd kept that promise better than I had.
She called every few months, sent photos of her daughter, refused to let the friendship die, no matter how poor I was at maintaining it.
I didn't deserve her. But I needed to hear a normal voice tonight.
"I'm fine," I said. "Busy. You know how it is."
"I know how you say it is. Which usually means you're working too much and not having any fun." She paused. "Are you having any fun, Keira?"
"I went to a museum last weekend."
"Alone?"
"The art doesn't care if I'm alone."
"That's not the point, and you know it." Amber sighed, and I could picture her settling onto her couch, tucking her feet under her the way she always did. "When's the last time you went on a date?"
"I don't have time to date."
"Everyone has time to date. They just have to make it a priority."
"Maybe I don't want to make it a priority."
"Maybe you're scared."
I didn't answer. Amber knew me too well—knew the broad strokes of why I'd left Chicago, if not the details. She'd never pushed for more than I was willing to give, but she'd also never stopped gently suggesting that I couldn't run forever. That at some point, I'd have to let someone in.
"There's no one," I said. "Really. Just work."
"Mmm." She didn't sound convinced. "What about patients? Any interesting ones?"
I thought about Rodion. About his dark eyes and his lying name and the way he'd looked at me like I was the only real thing in his world.
"They're all interesting," I said. "That's the job."
"That's not what I meant, and you know it."
"Amber."
"Fine, fine. Keep your secrets." She laughed, and the sound made me ache for something I couldn't name. "Just promise me you'll think about it. Opening up. Letting someone in. You deserve to be happy, Keira. Whatever happened in the past—you deserve more than hiding."
I promised. I didn't mean it.
After we hung up, I sat in my dark apartment and thought about what she'd said. You deserve to be happy. It sounded so simple. So achievable. Like happiness was just a choice you made, a door you walked through.
She didn't understand. Couldn't understand. The life I'd built was a house of cards, and one wrong move could bring it all crashing down. I couldn't let anyone in because letting someone in meant trusting them with the truth. And the truth was a weapon that could destroy everything I'd worked for.
I thought about Rodion. About his fabricated name and his careful deflections and all the things he wasn't telling me. We were the same, he and I. Two liars circling each other, drawn together by the recognition of kindred damage.
It should have made me run. Instead, it made me want to stay.
Thursday morning, I woke early with a strange sense of unease.
I couldn't pinpoint it at first. Just a prickle at the back of my neck, a low hum of alertness that I hadn't felt in years. I went through my morning routine—shower, coffee, the careful armor of professional dress—and tried to shake it off.
The walk to work felt different. I found myself scanning the crowds more carefully than usual, looking for... what? I didn't know. A familiar face. A pattern that didn't fit. Something wrong that I couldn't name.
I stopped at my usual coffee shop, and while I waited for my latte, I watched the street through the window. Pedestrians flowed past in the usual morning rush. Nothing out of place. Nothing unusual.
But the feeling persisted.
I'd learned to trust that feeling. It had saved my life more than once, back when my life needed saving.
The instinct that said someone is watching, someone is following, something is wrong.
I'd spent years honing it, and then more years trying to forget it, and now here it was again, whispering warnings I couldn't interpret.
You're being paranoid. No one knows you're here. No one is looking.
I almost believed it.
At the office, I buried myself in work. Reviewed case notes. Answered emails. Prepared for my sessions. The professional routine was soothing in its familiarity, and by midmorning, the unease had faded to a low background hum.
Then three o'clock came, and Margaret buzzed to tell me Mr. Zelenov had arrived, and everything else fell away.
I took a breath. Straightened my blazer. Reminded myself of all the boundaries I'd sworn to maintain.
Then I opened the door.
He was standing by the window, looking out at the city, and for a moment, I just watched him.
The set of his shoulders. The way he held himself—relaxed on the surface, coiled underneath.
He turned when he heard the door, and his face did something complicated when he saw me. Relief, maybe. Or hunger. Or both.
"Dr. Walsh."
"Mr. Zelenov. Please, sit."
We settled into our usual chairs, the familiar configuration that had somehow become charged with meaning. He was watching me with those dark eyes, and I forced myself to meet his gaze steadily. Professionally.
"How was your week?" I asked.
"Long." That word again, weighted with everything he wasn't saying. "Yours?"
"We're here to talk about you."
"We're always here to talk about me. Maybe I'm tired of that."
"That's often how patients feel around the third session. The initial novelty wears off, the real work begins to feel tedious—"
"That's not what I meant."
I knew what he meant. I chose to ignore it.
"Last session, you talked about performing. About the role you play in your family. I'd like to explore that further."
He was quiet for a moment, and I saw the internal debate play across his face. Push back or comply. Challenge the boundaries or accept them.
"What do you want to know?" he asked finally.
"When did it start? The performing."
"I told you. After my mother died."
"You said you were seventeen. That's when it started. But when did you realize you were doing it?"
He blinked, caught off guard by the question. Good. I needed to keep him off balance, keep the focus on him, keep myself from noticing the way the afternoon light caught the planes of his face.
"I don't know," he said slowly. "Years later, maybe.
I was at a family dinner—some holiday, I don't remember which—and I was doing my usual thing.
Telling jokes, keeping the conversation light, making sure no one got too close to anything real.
And my sister looked at me across the table with this expression. .." He trailed off.
"What kind of expression?"
"Sad. Like she could see what I was doing and it hurt her." He shook his head. "That was the first time I realized it wasn't just... me. It was a strategy. A wall."
"What did you do with that realization?"
"Nothing. Kept performing. What else was I supposed to do?"
"You could have stopped."
"And then what? Let everyone see the mess underneath?" He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "My family needed someone to hold things together. If I fell apart too, what would be left?"
"So you sacrificed your own authenticity to maintain the family structure."
"That's a very clinical way to put it."
"Is it inaccurate?"
He didn't answer, and the silence stretched between us. I watched him process the question, watched the mask flicker as something real moved beneath it.
"No," he said finally. "It's not inaccurate."
"How does it feel to say that out loud?"
"Like I'm admitting something I've been running from for fifteen years." His eyes met mine. "You're good at this. Making me say things I don't want to say."
"That's my job."
"Is it?" He leaned forward slightly, and the distance between us shrank. "Because sometimes it feels like something else."
I held his gaze, refusing to look away, refusing to acknowledge what he was implying. "The therapeutic relationship can feel intense. That's normal. It doesn't mean—"
"I know what it means. I know what you're going to say. Transference, professional boundaries, all the clinical terms that are supposed to make this make sense." He shook his head. "But you feel it too. Don't tell me you don't."
My heart was beating faster. I kept my voice steady through sheer force of will. "What I feel is irrelevant to your treatment."
"It's not irrelevant to me."
"Mr. Zelenov—"
"Rodion."
"We've discussed this."
"And yet here we are, discussing it again.
" He sat back, and something in his expression shifted.
Less pushing, more... honest. "I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable.
I'm not trying to cross lines. I just—" He stopped, ran a hand through his hair.
"I've never talked to anyone the way I talk to you.
I've never wanted to. And I don't know what to do with that. "
I should have shut it down. Should have reminded him, firmly and finally, that this was a professional relationship and nothing more. That whatever he thought he felt was a product of the therapeutic process, not a genuine connection.
But I couldn't say the words. Because they would have been a lie, and we both would have known it.
"What you're experiencing is real," I said carefully. "The connection, the sense of being seen—that's real. But it's also bounded. It exists within these walls, within these sessions. It's not the same as a relationship in the outside world."
"Why not?"
"Because I know things about you that you've never told anyone else. That creates an illusion of intimacy that isn't—"
"Isn't what? Real?" He shook his head. "You know what I think? I think it's more real than anything else in my life. I think you're the first person who's actually seen me in years. And I think that scares you as much as it scares me."
I didn't have a response. For a long moment, we just looked at each other, the air between us thick with everything we weren't saying.
Then the door crashed open.
I was on my feet before I knew I was moving, my chair toppling behind me. Rodion moved faster—he was already between me and the door, his body a shield, his hand reaching for something at his back.
Four men. Dark coats. Hard faces. And accents that turned my blood to ice.
"Keira O'Shea." The one in front smiled, a cold thing that didn't touch his eyes. "Your uncle's been looking for you. Time to come home."
The name hit me like a physical blow. The name I'd buried. The name I'd run from. The name that wasn't supposed to exist anymore.
"You've got the wrong person," I managed. "My name is Walsh. Keira Walsh."
"Sure it is." He took a step forward, and I saw the gun at his hip. "Cormac's got big plans for you. The Petrovics are eager to meet their new bride. Branko's been waiting a long time for a proper wife."
Bride. Petrovics. Branko.
The words didn't make sense. Couldn't make sense. I'd left that world behind. I'd built something new, something clean, something that had nothing to do with arranged marriages and crime families and men who treated women like currency.
"I'm not going anywhere with you."
"Wasn't asking."
And then Rodion moved.
I'd thought he was a businessman. A man with money and secrets, yes, but still just a patient. A civilian.
The gun appeared in his hand like it had always been there. Two shots. Two men down before the others could react. The third rushed him—Rodion broke his arm with a single brutal motion, took his weapon, shot the fourth.
It was over in seconds. Four bodies on my office floor. Blood on the carpet. Blood on the walls. Blood everywhere.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't process what I'd just seen. This man—this patient who'd sat in my chair and talked about his mother—had just killed four people with the efficiency of someone who'd done it many times before.
He turned to me, and his face was nothing like the man I'd known. Cold. Hard. Dangerous.
"We need to go. Now. More will be coming."
"Who—" My voice cracked. "Who are you?"
"Someone who just saved your life." He grabbed my arm, pulling me toward the door. "Move."
"I'm not going anywhere with—"
"Your name is Keira O'Shea. Those men were Irish mob. They want to marry you off to the Petrovics." His grip tightened. "So you can come with me, or you can wait here for the next group and become Mrs. Branko Petrovic. Your choice."
I looked at the bodies. At the blood. At the gun in his hand.
I went with him.