Chapter 28 Daria
Daria
I’ve been staring at the ceiling for two hours, watching shadows crawl across the plaster while my mind cycles through every possible outcome of tomorrow, along with the timeline Alexei outlined this afternoon with calm detachment.
We have good odds, according to Boris. Better than good, actually. Overwhelming force applied with coordination and surprise.
So why can’t I stop shaking?
The apartment is still, except for the occasional clink of metal from the kitchen.
Pyotr is cleaning his weapons. He does it whenever he needs to think, the same way I play the piano. The repetitive motion keeps the hands busy while the mind works through problems too big for words.
I throw off the covers and pad down the hallway in bare feet. Pyotr is sitting at the table with his back to me and a disassembled pistol spread across a cloth in front of him.
“You should be sleeping,” he complains without turning around.
“So should you.”
He picks up another piece and runs the cloth along its surface.
“Can I sit with you?” I ask.
He nods toward the chair across from him. I take it, pull my knees to my chest, and wrap my arms around them. Gun parts cover the table alongside cleaning supplies and a half-empty glass of water. No alcohol. He mentioned once that he never drinks before an operation. Clear head, steady hands.
“I keep running the numbers,” I admit. “Eleven against ten. Three entry points. Less than ten minutes from breach to extraction. It all sounds so clean when Alexei explains it.”
“Clean is the goal.”
“But it never actually goes that way, does it?”
Pyotr’s hands pause on the gun barrel. He stares at the metal for a long moment before setting it down.
“No,” he admits. “Plans tend to fall apart once the first shot is fired. Someone moves when they should stay still. A door is locked that should be open. Communications fail, and targets aren’t where the intelligence said they’d be.
” He picks up another piece. “The plan isn’t really the point; it’s just a framework.
Something to fall back on when everything goes sideways. ”
“That’s not comforting.”
“I’ll always be honest with you, golubka.
Even when it isn’t comfortable.” He glances up at me.
“You asked me once to stop protecting you from the truth. This is the truth. Tomorrow is dangerous, and people might get hurt. But dangerous doesn’t mean hopeless, and the men going into that warehouse know what they’re doing, including me. ”
I rest my chin on my knees and watch him work.
His hands move through the cleaning process on autopilot after years of practice.
Those same hands have touched me with impossible gentleness and braided my daughter’s hair.
They’ve also killed men without hesitation.
It should make me sick to my stomach, but it brings me comfort.
“What was your first operation like?” I ask. “The very first one, when you were young and new and didn’t know what to expect.”
Pyotr considers the question while he reassembles the pistol. “Grozny. Fourteen years ago. I was twenty-two and invincible.”
“Were you scared?”
“Terrified.” He slides a component into place with a soft click. “But that was the night I learned that plans are just wishes with better formatting. What matters is the people beside you, and their training, instincts, and willingness to adapt when everything falls apart.”
“Do you trust the men going in tomorrow?”
“With my life.” He doesn’t miss a beat. “Boris trained me when I joined your family. Alexei has more combat experience than almost anyone I’ve served with, and the others are professionals who’ve proven themselves over and again.”
“Then why do you look worried?”
He sets down the gun part and meets my eyes. “Because you’re here, Kira is in Moscow waiting for her mother to come home, and for the first time in years, I have something to lose beyond my skin.”
The admission settles into the space between us. I uncurl from my protective position and lean forward, resting my elbows on the table.
“I called her before dinner.” I sigh heavily. “Mila put her on the phone, and she talked for twenty minutes about Sofia’s toys and the garden and some cat that keeps visiting the compound. Not once did she ask about Bogdan. She just talked like a normal five-year-old having a normal day.”
“That’s a good thing.”
I pick at a scratch on the table’s surface as tears spring to my eyes.
Before they can fall, I blink them away.
“Sometimes, I wonder if I’ve already broken something in her.
If growing up surrounded by all of this has damaged her in ways that won’t show until she’s older.
Until she tries to trust someone and can’t figure out how. ”
“You haven’t broken her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know that she laughs easily and trusts openly. She makes friends with strangers and drags them into tea parties with no fear.” He reaches across the table and stills my fidgeting hand.
“Broken children don’t do those things, Daria.
Broken children hide and flinch and make themselves small and invisible. Kira is none of those things.”
“Because I protected her.”
“Which is a testament to you as a mother, given the circumstances.”
I turn my hand over beneath his, lacing our fingers together. His palm is rough with calluses, and it feels so soothing against my cold skin. We sit like that for a moment, connected across the table with gun parts scattered between us.
“If I die tomorrow, will Kira be okay?”
He squeezes my hand, and for a beat, he doesn’t answer. I watch him wrestle with the question, trying to find words that won’t feel like a lie or a platitude or an empty promise neither of us can keep.
“She has Mila and Alexei,” he reminds me softly.
“She would attend good schools and have everything she needs, never wanting for anything. She would be surrounded by people who love her.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and his fingers linger against my jaw. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
“You can’t promise me that.”
Pyotr releases my hand and pushes back from the table.
He crosses to my side and crouches in front of my chair, putting us at eye level.
This close, I can see the faint scar near his left ear, the silver threading through his dark hair at the temples, and the lines around his eyes that crease when he’s thinking hard.
“Watch me.” He cups my face in his hands, tilting my head up before he presses his lips to my forehead. “That little girl will have her mother for a very long time. That’s the plan.
“Planning isn’t the same as guaranteeing.”
“No, but it’s what I have to offer.” He glides his thumb along my cheekbone and adds, “I can’t control what happens inside that warehouse.
I can only control how prepared I am, how focused I stay, and how quickly I react when things go wrong.
I can tell you this much: I’ve never had more reason to walk out of a fight alive than I do right now. ”
My eyes burn. I blink hard, refusing to let the tears fall. Crying won’t help anything. It won’t keep him safe or bring Kira home or make tomorrow any less terrifying.
“I don’t want to spend tonight thinking about what might go wrong,” I whisper. “I don’t want to lie in bed alone, staring at the ceiling, imagining every possible disaster until the sun comes up, and it’s time to face the real thing.”
“What do you want?”
The question is so simple and direct, demanding an answer I’m not sure I’m brave enough to give.
But I’m so tired of being afraid, holding back, and protecting myself from things that might hurt when the thing that’s hurting me is the distance I keep putting between myself and everyone who tries to get close.
“I want you to stay with me tonight. Not standing guard outside my door or sitting in the kitchen cleaning guns until dawn. With me. In my bed. Close enough that I can hear you breathing.”
Something moves behind his eyes. His hands slide from my face to my shoulders, then down my arms until he’s holding my hands.
“Daria…”
“I know what I’m asking and what it means.
We haven’t talked about what this is between us or what happens after or any of the things that normal people discuss before they—” I stop myself and take a breath.
“Everything changes in the morning, one way or another. And if this is the last night we have, I refuse to spend it alone and wondering what might have been if I’d just been brave enough to ask for what I want. ”
He searches my face for second thoughts or a sign that I’m asking out of fear rather than desire.
Whatever he finds must satisfy him, because he rises and pulls me to my feet. I stumble into him, my balance unsteady, and his arm wraps around my waist to hold me upright. We stand there in the kitchen, chest to chest, his heartbeat against mine.
And then he bends and sweeps me off my feet with one arm behind my knees and the other supporting my back.
I loop my arms around his neck as he carries me down the hallway, past Kira’s empty bedroom with its dinosaur posters and abandoned toys, then past the bathroom and the closet, where I keep the emergency bag I’ve never used.
He carries me through the bedroom door and kicks it shut behind us, sealing out the guns on the kitchen table, a warehouse waiting in Primorsky District, and a man who’s hunted me for three years and doesn’t know what’s coming for him.
Pyotr lowers me onto the bed and follows me down, and for the first time in longer than I can remember, I stop counting the hours until morning.