Chapter 6 #2
“Gianni. Your father. Men with a signed order authorizing them to drug you when you refuse them.”
“My brother is there.”
“I know.”
“Then take me back.”
“No.”
The word was quiet. It had no apology in it.
I stepped close enough that my shoulder almost brushed his chest. “You do not get to decide which danger belongs to me.”
“I can’t stop you walking into it.” His eyes were dark and steady. “I won’t lock that door. I won’t take those keys from you. But I will not personally deliver you to men who planned to sedate you into obedience.”
“You think refusing to drive me makes you different.”
“No.” His jaw flexed. “I think it means I refuse one thing.”
“You took me.”
“Yes, of course I did. And I would do it again.”
The admission hit harder than a denial would have.
“I took you,” he continued. “And I will answer for that. But I won’t pretend the road back to Mill Basin is neutral ground. It isn’t. It’s a loaded gun pointed at your head.”
My fingers closed around the keys.
The garage beyond the door waited. The car waited. A false passport. Cash. A phone. Hotels, airports, police stations. All the doors I had told myself did not exist.
There was no command hidden under his refusal. No guard stepping forward. No hand reaching for my arm.
Only the unbearable fact that I could leave.
And the worse fact that I could not leave Kiryl.
“Until you get him out,” I said.
Sal did not move.
“I’ll stay,” I said, each word bitter. “Until Kiryl is out. Then I decide what happens.”
“Good.”
I shoved the envelope into the pocket of his coat. “Don’t look pleased.”
“I’m not.”
He was lying a little. I could see it in the way his shoulders loosened.
I hated him for being relieved. I hated myself more for making it possible.
The bag arrived with pastries, underwear, and the kind of practical mercy that made me want to throw it down the stairwell.
Salvatore’s brother Tonio stood in the open doorway holding two paper bags and grinning like a man who had never delivered emergency clothing to a kidnapped bride before.
“From Katerina,” he said. “She runs a bakery. She said nobody chooses clothes well under duress, which felt rude but accurate.”
“I’m not under duress.”
He looked at my torn wedding dress, Sal’s coat, the butterfly closures on Sal’s cheek.
“Of course not.”
“Who is Katerina?”
“A woman much smarter than me.” He handed over the bags. “Black leggings. Cashmere jumper. Socks. Underwear. Things for washing. She made the selections. I carried them because apparently I have arms and no judgment.”
Sal stood at the kitchen counter behind him, saying nothing.
I opened the bag.
Black leggings. Soft enough to slide through my fingers.
Thick socks. Underwear still folded in tissue paper.
A large dark grey cashmere jumper. A toothbrush.
Face wash. A hair tie. Things a woman I had never met had thought to send because she understood the small humiliations of arriving somewhere without any of your own things.
The second bag held pastries. Honey-dark baklava. A glossy braided bread dusted with sesame. Something warm with orange and cardamom rising from the paper.
“I don’t need charity,” I said.
Tonio’s expression changed. The charm did not leave it, exactly. It just stepped aside.
“Don't let Kat hear you call it charity,” he said. “She’ll go ballistic.”
I looked at the bag again.
“Thank her,” I said.
“Of course.”
He left after that. Sal closed the door behind him.
I took the clothes into the bathroom and locked it, which was childish because I knew he would not come in. Still, my hand shook once on the latch.
The mirror gave me back a stranger. Hair tangled. Mouth bruised at one corner. Shoulder bare under shredded white silk. I looked like a bride after a fire.
Not how I wanted to look the day after my wedding day.
I stripped out of the dress slowly.
The leggings fit. The underwear fit. The cashmere jumper fell almost to my knees, soft and heavy over my skin. I put on the socks and stood there in them for a minute, staring at my own feet.
Practical, I told myself.
Nothing more.
When I came out, the penthouse was quiet.
I found Sal in the second bathroom, standing over the sink. There was fresh blood on the white marble.
“You reopened the cut.”
He looked at me in the mirror. “It’s nothing.”
“Of course it is.”
He had removed two butterfly closures. The cut on his cheek had split at the edge, red against the dark stubble. I remembered the firebird pin going in. The resistance of his skin. The hot spill of blood.
Guilt moved through me again, but it did not travel alone.
“Sit,” I said.
His brow lifted.
“Do not make this into a power struggle. You’re bleeding on an expensive bathroom.”
For one second, the corner of his mouth threatened that impossible smile.
Then he sat on the marble counter.
He was still in the dark shirt, but he had unbuttoned the top three buttons. His throat was bare. The hollow at its base. A glimpse of warm olive skin and dark hair at his chest. His shoulders filled the space behind him. His knees spread slightly so I could stand between them without touching him.
His hands went behind him on the counter.
Deliberately visible. Deliberately away from me.
I opened the trauma kit with fingers that were steadier than I felt.
“You don’t have to hold yourself like a saint,” I muttered.
“I’m not.”
“You look uncomfortable.”
“Well that’s becuase I’m uncomfortable, Eintsein.”
That made me look at him.
His eyes were on my face, not my body. His pupils had widened. His jaw was tight.
Heat slipped under the cashmere.
I wet gauze and cleaned the blood away. His cheek was warm beneath my fingertips. Warmer than it should have been. His stubble scraped softly against the pads of my fingers as I steadied his jaw.
He smelled clean. Soap. Something darker underneath. The faint spice of his cologne, restrained enough that I noticed only when I was close enough to feel his breath against my wrist.
My heart beat too fast.
“You should have ducked,” I said.
“I did.”
“Poorly.”
I pressed the wound closed. He did not flinch. I set the first closure across it, then the second. My knuckles brushed the hard line of his jaw.
His breath changed.
So did mine.
I focused on the final strip. One more. Press. Hold.
“Good girl,” he murmured.
The words were quiet. Unplanned.
They went through me like a live wire.
My breath caught. My thighs tightened under the leggings. A small, humiliating pulse opened low in my body, sharp enough that I nearly dropped the strip.
Sal saw it.
I knew he saw it because his eyes went darker. Because his fingers flexed once behind him against the marble. Because the room seemed suddenly too small for the two of us and the clean scent of soap and blood.
He did not touch me.
“Thank you for doing that,” he said. “I know you don’t like me much.”
Then he slid off the counter and stepped back.
One step. Then another.
He gave me space like it cost him something.
I stood there holding the empty wrapper from the closure, furious with my own body for leaning toward him after he had moved away.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “And you’re right. I don’t like you much.”
My voice did not sound like mine.
The problem was, I did like him. A lot.
The temporary office sat at the far end of the penthouse, glass walls turned opaque by drawn shades. A laptop glowed on the desk. Files had been stacked in clean squares beside it.
Sal had gone downstairs to take a call.
I’d been exploring a little, as Sal had told me I was free to go where I pleased. I figured maybe I could find something about Kiryl, or about Gianni, or about just how far this fast-devloping war might go.
I opened the files.
The first file bore the name of one of my father’s companies. The second, Northbridge. The third had my name typed across the tab.
YELENA SOKOLOVA.
My fingers went cold.
Inside were copies of shareholder records, fleet schedules, photographs of the Zhar-Ptitsa, timelines of Gianni’s movements. There were surveillance stills of me entering my father’s restaurant. Me standing at his shoulder. Me in the dining room, head turned toward a frightened waiter.
Notes.
Subject intervenes before floor captain can discipline employee. Pattern consistent with prior footage. Protects lower-status staff despite personal exposure.
Another page.
Subject demonstrates total recall of dispatch figures and contract structures. Lev Sokolov relies on her operationally while maintaining public fiction of decorative role.
Another.
Likely pressure point: younger brother, Kiryl. Do not approach directly without confirming whether contact would increase risk to subject.
I read every word.
Cargo. That was what I had been. A route. A pressure point. A subject.
Something in me went very still.
“Put it down, please.”
Sal’s voice came from the doorway.
I turned. He stood with one shoulder against the frame, his tie loosened, phone in one hand. The fresh closure on his cheek looked almost white against his skin.
“You had me watched.”
“Of course. It’s my business.”
“How long?”
“Long enough.”
“Before the restaurant.”
“Yes.”
I laughed. It sounded wrong in the room. “Of course. The questions. The manifest. The little conversation in the corridor. Did you plan that too?”
“No.”
“But you planned me. To snatch me? To take me away from my wedding.”
His gaze did not leave mine. “No. Not at first. To begin with, I planned the investigation.”
“I want to know more.”
His jaw tightened.
“To begin with, you were the seam in the alliance,” he said. “The person most likely to know what Gianni was moving and where he was hiding it.”
“An asset.”
“Yes.”
The honesty hurt worse than a lie.
I picked up the glass of whisky from the desk. It smelled like smoke and wood. I drank it anyway. It burned all the way down.
“You and Gianni should compare notes. He calls me ptichka. You call me a seam. Different cages. Same animal.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make us the same.”
I took another drink. “Your family produces murderers and accountants. Forgive me if the distinctions blur.”
“Gianni is not my family.”