6. I almost wish you were awful. （Aleksander）
I ALMOST WISH YOU WERE AWFUL. (ALEKSANDER)
Iset the whiskey down untouched and loosen my tie, pacing once across the study.
This is the one room I actually think in. Everything else in this apartment is furniture. This is where decisions are made.
Tonight, I’m not sure I trust myself to make any.
What the hell was that?
This was supposed to be simple. An alliance. Optics. A signature written in vows and gold rings. None of it was supposed to reach me.
But the moment Tamara Kalinin walked through those cathedral doors looking furious enough to burn the building down, duty became a woman in white lace trying not to break.
I recognized something in her before I let myself want her.
She was trapped. And worse, she knew exactly what she was.
Most people in our world lie to themselves. Dress coercion up as loyalty. Call fear duty because it sounds cleaner.
Tamara didn’t.
I saw it in the way she carried herself at the altar, every inch of her arranged into refusal.
When she leaned toward me, she looked resolved. Like she’d already accepted she might have to let me take what I wanted.
The part I cannot shake is that she was prepared for it.
I scrub a hand over my face and stare down at the amber liquid in my glass.
There was a time I would’ve finished this bottle and started another. Weeks disappearing into static—needles, vodka, a grief I couldn’t outrun fast enough. After Elena died, Igor dragged me back. Sat with me through the worst of it. Never mentioned it again.
The scars are pale now, easy to miss unless someone pays attention. Tamara pays attention. She also knows when not to speak.
Smart.
Most people either ask stupid questions or pretend not to see. She catalogued it and moved on.
My phone lights up across the desk. Missed calls. Updates. Problems that will still be problems tomorrow.
I ignore all of them.
Tonight isn’t about Colombians or territory or politics. Tonight is about the line I drew in that bedroom. I meant every word. If she never wants me, then she never wants me.
I leave the whiskey where it is. That is the first decision I trust tonight. Then I head for the bedroom.
The door is closed. Warm light spills beneath it in a thin gold line.
I open it quietly.
She’s already in bed, curled on her side, facing the windows, blonde hair spread across the pillow in soft disorder. She is trying to disappear into my bed and failing completely.
She breathes like someone performing sleep badly.
I move through the room, keeping distance, and go into the bathroom. Cold water. Darkness. By the time I come back out, she hasn’t moved.
I cross to my side of the bed.
The mattress shifts beneath my weight, and the space between us becomes the most deliberate thing in the room.
Then I decide to say it. “You grind your teeth.”
“What?” she says, offended enough to prove my point.
“Not badly. Just when you’re stressed.”
“You’ve known me for less than twelve hours.”
“And?”
She gives up on pretending to sleep and rolls onto her back, still leaving the center of the bed untouched.
“You’re very observant.”
“It’s useful.”
Her attention shifts to the nightstand.
“You read Robert Moses before bed?”
I glance toward the book. “You know who Robert Moses is?”
“I’m an interior designer, not illiterate.”
That one nearly gets me.
“That sounded offended.”
“It was.”
A pause.
“No. I don’t read it before bed.”
“That’s somehow worse.”
There is a sharp edge beneath the exhaustion. Anger is doing more than keeping her upright. It is keeping her honest.
“You know what’s strange?” she asks.
“What?”
She stares up at the ceiling. “I almost wish you were awful.”
I understand exactly what she means. “That would make this easier.”
“Yes.”
A beat. Then, quietly, “Because this life? It wasn’t exactly on my vision board.”
“You look more like someone trying not to set the building on fire.”
Her head turns slightly toward me. “Maybe I’m considering it.”
“I don’t blame you.”
I should leave it alone. I don’t. “Your father gave you a reason to say yes.”
It’s not a question. She takes one second too long to answer.
“Maybe I just have a strong sense of family duty.”
A deflection. Clean enough to respect. Not clean enough to believe.
Whatever her father’s holding over her, it’s enough to put her in a cathedral with a stranger. That’s not duty. That’s desperation with a good poker face.
“I don’t trust you,” she adds, as if I don’t know that already.
“That’s smart.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“It would bother me more if you trusted me immediately.”
This time, she doesn’t answer like she’s defending a border.
“This whole thing is insane,” she murmurs eventually.
“Yes.”
She laughs, and for once it doesn’t sound like a weapon.
I can’t remember the last time I talked to someone in the dark like this—no strategy, no agenda, just two people in the same impossible situation.
“You should sleep,” I say after a while.
“You keep saying that.”
The city hums beyond the glass. Eventually she turns onto her side, facing the windows again.
I stay where I am because the distance is the promise.
A few minutes later, she stops performing sleep and actually finds it.
And somewhere in the dark, before exhaustion catches me too, one thought surfaces and won’t go back down.
She’s protecting something.
Someone.