Chapter 19
Polina
Lev shows up at my door looking like he’s braced for impact.
I let him in anyway, which says enough about my state of my judgment. I step back, open the door wider, and watch him cross my threshold like he expects me to change my mind before it shuts.
He looks awful. His suit is rumpled, his face is drawn, and he leaves all the usual bullshit at the door with his coat. No smirk. No teasing. No line about my mouth, my temper, or the way I looked in that dress.
That scares me more than any smug comment would have. He looks like he came here to bleed out the truth.
It’s about God damn time.
I lock the door and turn to face him. “Start talking.”
Lev stops in the middle of my kitchen and watches me. He doesn’t sit, he doesn’t touch me, and he doesn’t move any closer.
“My father’s men followed you tonight,” he says.
“I know that part. Tell me what matters. For example, why were they following me?”
“They found out I’ve been seeing someone. Since I wasn’t forthcoming about who that someone is, my father went digging. I suspect they’re days away from connecting you to the Kozlovs.”
I fold my arms across my chest, so I don’t start pacing. “How long do we have?”
“I don’t know. A few? Maybe less. Once they pull the right thread, they’ll get your full name.”
I keep my face steady even though my stomach drops. “What happens when they do?”
He waits a beat, and I hate it.
“When they confirm who you are, my father won’t see you as a doctor.”
A humorless laugh slips out of me. “No one in your world sees me as a doctor.”
He works his jaw before he says, “He’ll see you as leverage against Dmitri. Or a loose end.”
The room goes deadly quiet. The kettle ticks on the stove where I left it earlier, and a car passes outside while I stand in my kitchen trying not to picture what his father does with leverage.
Panic won’t help me, so I force myself to appear calm. “What’s your plan?”
Lev looks at me like he expected me to scream first. Then he gives me an answer that turns my body cold.
“I’m taking you to Dmitri.”
He continues before I can respond, as if he knows he has one chance to get through this.
“I’ll confess the relationship. I’ll give him everything I know about the Morozovs, then I’ll ask for protective custody for both of us.”
I stare at him, waiting for the punchline.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“No.” I shake my head and step back from him. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Polina, I—”
“No.” My voice jumps before I can stop it, and he flinches. “You do not get to walk in here and tell me your solution is to hand me over to my cousin like I’m a fucking package, Lev.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“You’re trying to drag me into the one thing I’ve spent my entire adult life staying out of.” I jab a finger at him, furious now. “Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
I push harder because I don’t believe he does.
“Going to Dmitri means I become what I swore I’d never be.
I show up on his doorstep with a Morozov at my side and ask for protection because I made a stupid choice and slept with the wrong man.
I stop being a person and turn into a problem.
” The next words taste like acid, but I hurl them at him anyway. “A liability.”
Lev throws his hands in the air, then drops them again. “You’re out of options, Polina.”
My laugh comes fast and ugly. “Do not tell me what my options are.”
“Then tell me what you want to do.”
“I’ll disappear.” The answer comes out immediately because I’ve been building it since the coatroom. “I’ll transfer hospitals or take leave. Leave Moscow if I have to. I’ll change my number, my routine, everything. I’ll stay somewhere your father’s men will never find me.”
Lev looks at me with that same grim expression he had earlier, and I hate what comes next.
“That won’t work.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” He takes one step closer, and I hold my ground. “You don’t know how he works.”
“And you do?”
“Yes.” He delivers it without ego or room for argument.
“Then explain it,” I snap.
He watches me for a moment. “I found your name in my father’s intelligence files two years ago.”
My heart seizes.
His eyes stay on mine as he adds, “I’ve been tracking you since then.”
My brain takes a second to process it, and then the meaning arrives all at once.
“What did you just say?” I whisper.
“I knew who you were before the hospital. In fact, I directed my men to take me to Moscow General because it was your hospital.”
I laugh because the alternative is screaming. “No. That’s not what you just said.”
“It is.”
I take two steps back and hit the counter with my hip hard enough to bruise. I barely feel it.
“You tracked me,” I breathe in disbelief.
Every memory I have of him starts rearranging itself. The flowers. The restaurant. The review. The things he knew and delivered like jokes. The way he watched me as if he’d practiced.
Because he had.
And then something worse than anger moves through me. If he knew who I was all along, then every moment I thought I was making a choice, he already had more information than I did.
The flowers. Coming to my hospital. The Georgian restaurant. The book. I thought I was deciding. I thought this was mine. And the whole time, the ground was already laid.
A woman like me—a woman who left everything behind specifically so no one could ever move her like a piece on a board—never even saw it.
Oh, my God. The book he sent the night his family put two of my cousins in the hospital! It was all part of this grand scheme to get to me, to get my family.
My mouth goes dry, and my lungs burn, screaming at me to breathe. A single tear tracks down my cheek, and my body trembles. “Was all of this just an assignment?”
“No,” he rushes to answer. “My father didn’t send me.”
“Don’t lie to me now.”
“I’m not lying.”
The anger rises so fast that my hands shake. “Then why? Why me?”
Lev takes one step toward me and stops when I recoil. I see the reaction land, and I don’t care.
“Because I saw your file,” he responds. “I expected another Kozlov tied to the family business, and you weren’t. I kept watching, and I couldn’t stop.”
I grab the edge of the counter and squeeze until my fingers hurt. “You’re saying this like it helps.”
He drags a hand through his hair and drops it. “I’m trying to tell you what this was.”
I stare at him and taste rage at the back of my throat. “Then say it. What the hell was it, Lev?”
“It was an… obsession.”
I wait for him to add something. To explain that he used the wrong word, or maybe for the word itself to sound less insane. But when he just stands there, looking at me the way he always has, like he knows who I am and all of my secrets, I realize obsession is the right word to use.
“Get out,” I scream, jerking my head toward the door.
“Polina.”
“Get the fuck out of my apartment, Lev, or I swear to God—”
“I’m not leaving until you agree to let me take you to Dmitri.”
I blink at him. “You do not get to make demands in my home.” I grab the nearest thing on the counter without thinking. A water glass. Heavy enough to feel solid in my hand. “Leave.”
His eyes drop to the glass and come back to my face. “No.”
I throw it at his head, and Lev jerks aside. The glass misses his temple by inches and explodes against the wall behind him. Water sprays across the tile, and shards skitter under the table.
Neither of us says a word, and I stand there breathing too hard while water runs down the wall behind him. My hand shakes, and I stare at the wet mark in the plaster.
Lev straightens slowly. “That was a good throw.”
“Do not compliment me right now.”
His mouth tightens. “I’m not joking.”
I grab the dish towel by the sink and twist it in both hands, so I don’t reach for something heavier.
I breathe through my nose and speak clearly. “I am not going with you tonight. I need time to think, and I need time to get my head on straight before I walk into anything with my family attached to your name.”
“Morning might be too late.”
“It’s what you’re getting.” I point at him and then at the door. “I will call Dmitri. If this happens, it happens because I say it does. You do not get to drag me into a car again and decide for me.”
I can see the argument building behind his eyes as he watches me, but I lift my chin before he can start.
“Do not test me any more than you already have tonight.”
His gaze drops to the broken glass, then comes back to me. After a beat, he nods.
“Morning, then.” The way he says it sounds like he’s conceding the point without accepting the loss.
Lev moves to the door and pauses with his hand on the knob. He looks over his shoulder at me, at the towel twisted in my fists, and at the woman who let him in and now wants him gone.
“Lock the door behind me.”
A tired, furious laugh slips out before I can stop it. “There’s not a soul in this city more dangerous to me than you are, Lev. Get out.”
He opens the door and walks out without looking back, and the silence he leaves behind is worse than the shouting.
I lock the door the second it shuts, then stand with my forehead against the wood, breathing hard and trying to figure out which part of this night I’m supposed to survive first.