Chapter 29
ELENA
Roman is already dressed when I come out of my room at seven. He’s standing at the kitchen counter with his phone in his hand and his jacket on and he looks up when he hears me and says, “Sit down, I need to talk to you.”
Something about the combination of those two things, fully dressed at seven and needing to talk, makes me pull out the chair and sit without saying anything.
He puts his phone face down on the counter.
“Your security detail is being increased,” he says.
“Eight men on rotation instead of four. Two inside the building at all times, not just the lobby.” He holds my gaze.
“Your schedule also needs to go through Kostya for approval before anything is confirmed. Appointments, visits, any time you leave this building.”
I look at him. “Why?”
“There is an elevated threat level. It is a precaution.”
“An elevated threat level,” I say. “From what?”
“From the current operational environment.”
I put both hands flat on the table. “Roman. I am not one of your operatives. You cannot brief me in code and expect me to nod and go back to my room. What is the elevated threat? What is the current operational environment? What are you actually telling me?”
He picks up his phone and puts it in his jacket pocket. “I’m telling you that your detail is being increased, and your schedule needs Kostya’s approval. That is what I am telling you.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the answer I’m giving you.”
I stand up. “Then it’s not good enough.”
He looks at me across the kitchen. His jaw is set, and his eyes are steady. He’s doing the thing he does when he has made a decision and has no intention of revisiting it, but I have been watching this man’s face for two years, and I’m not moving until he gives me something real.
“I have a right to know what I’m being protected from,” I say. “I live here. I am carrying your child. I am your wife. Whatever is happening in your world that has made you decide overnight that I need eight men and a schedule that goes through Kostya, I deserve to know what it is.”
“You are safe,” he says. “That’s what you need to know.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Elena.”
“Do not Elena me.” I hear my voice go sharp, and I don’t pull it back because I mean it.
“You walked in here this morning with a list of restrictions and a reason you will not actually explain, and you expect me to accept that because you said so. I’m not going to do that. Tell me what is happening.”
He moves from behind the counter, and I think he’s going to walk past me and end the conversation the way he ends conversations, by simply leaving them, and I step into his path without thinking about it, and he stops.
We are two feet apart.
“What are you hiding from me?” I say.
“Nothing that concerns you right now.”
“It concerns me if it is the reason I need eight men and a Kostya-approved schedule. It concerns me if it is the reason you have been studying until two in the morning for the last three nights. It concerns me because I live in this house and I am having your baby, and whatever is out there that is making you look like that is already my problem, whether you tell me or not.”
“Like what?” he says.
“Like you’re scared.”
The kitchen goes quiet.
Roman looks at me, and I look at him, and I have said the word, and it is sitting between us now, and I watch his face for the denial that does not come.
He doesn’t tell me he is not scared. He doesn’t tell me I am wrong.
He stands two feet away from me in his kitchen in his jacket with his jaw tight, and he looks at me, and for three seconds, the control he keeps over every muscle of his face slips just enough that I see what is underneath it.
Not the cold efficiency of a man managing a security situation.
A man who found out something yesterday that he has not slept since learning, standing in front of the thing he found out about, trying to put himself between her and it without her knowing it is there.
My throat tightens.
“Roman,” I say, quieter now.
“Please,” he says.
One word. Quiet and direct and costing him something I can see the price of in his face. Roman Petrov does not say please. I stand in front of him, and I feel the argument go out of me like air.
“The schedule goes through Kostya,” he says. “The detail is eight. That is not a negotiation, and I need you to accept it.”
I look at his face.
I look at what is sitting behind his eyes and I think about what it costs a man like him to stand in his own kitchen and say please to anyone for any reason, and I think about eight men and a rerouted schedule and three nights of two in the morning, and I think about the thing I saw in his expression for three seconds before he put it back.
“Alright,” I say.
He holds my gaze for a moment. Then he picks up his keys from the counter, and he walks to the door, and he stops with his hand on the frame, and he doesn’t turn around.
“Thank you,” he says.
He leaves.
I stand in the kitchen and I listen to the elevator arrive and depart, and then I sit back down at the table.
I put my hands flat on the surface and I look at nothing and I think about the word please in his mouth and the look on his face and Aleksei outside the clinic and the driver who promised to say nothing and all of it sitting in the same space at the same time pressing in from every direction.
I do not move for a long time.