27. Sloane
SLOANE
Vadim is reaching for the study door when I look back at the desk one last time and see the photograph beneath the edge of an open folder.
I almost miss it.
There are too many things competing for attention in the room—documents stacked in careful piles, a half-empty glass beside Vadim’s laptop, a map spread across one corner of the desk with several locations circled in dark ink—but the face in the photograph catches somewhere in my memory before I consciously recognize it, and I stop with my hand still resting against Vadim’s arm.
He looks down at me. “What?”
I don’t answer immediately. Instead, I move closer to the desk, leaning just enough to see the photograph properly without touching anything.
The man is dressed differently in the picture. He’s wearing a dark coat and looking away from the camera, his expression much colder than I remember, but there’s no possibility that I have mistaken him.
My stomach turns. “Who is that?”
Vadim follows my gaze. Something about him changes almost immediately, though his voice remains calm when he answers.
“Viktor Petrov.” He’s looking at me. “My worst enemy.”
I keep staring at the photograph. For one terrifying second I’m certain the reaction must show on my face, because there’s suddenly a roaring sound in my ears and the room seems to narrow around that one name.
I recover quickly, clearing my throat. “He’s the one who planned the attack on you?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, looking away. There’s something he’s not telling me. Or it could be just a simple matter of them being enemies. He’s a mob boss after all. And so is Petrov, I assume.
But he’s also the same man I met in a club three weeks ago. I remember the bar. The expensive jacket. The controlled smile. The way he asked what I did for work and then guessed flight attendant with such easy confidence that I thought he was simply observant.
I remember him asking about difficult passengers.
I remember refusing to tell him anything.
I remember his card.
My bag.
The tracker.
Every thought arrives at once, so violently that I have to force myself to breathe normally.
Vadim is watching me now. “What about him?”
I turn toward him before my silence becomes suspicious. “Nothing.”
His eyes narrow slightly. “You asked.”
“I just got curious,” I say.
It’s not technically a lie, and I cling to that because the alternative would require explaining everything right now, here, moments before Mila’s birthday dinner, while Vadim is standing beside me in one of the rare good moods I’ve seen him sustain for longer than several minutes.
He places one hand at the small of my back and guides me toward the door. “Come. Mila will assume we forgot.”
The warmth of his palm settles through the fabric of my dress, and for a few seconds I almost tell him.
I almost stop in the doorway and say that I’ve seen Viktor Petrov before, that he bought me a drink after my first flight with Vadim, that he knew I worked in aviation, that he handed me a card I later put into the same bag somebody tampered with before the Bucharest attack.
Instead, I leave the study with Vadim.
And for the next two hours, I think about almost nothing else.
The birthday celebration is smaller than I expected, although I’m beginning to understand that small in this family still involves more food than twenty people could reasonably finish, candles everywhere, flowers arranged across the dining room, and Anya vibrating with so much excitement on Mila’s behalf that she nearly knocks over a tray before Nadia catches it.
Mila walks into the room and stops, and for a moment, nobody says anything. That alone tells me this was the right thing to do.
Her eyes move across the table, then toward the cake, then to the flowers and the small pile of wrapped gifts beside them, and the expression that crosses her face is so nakedly surprised that I feel something tighten inside my chest.
“You remembered,” she says.
Vadim stands beside me with one hand in his pocket. “I was informed.”
Mila looks at him. Then at me. Her mouth curves very slightly. “You told him.”
“I may have mentioned it.”
“You instructed him,” Marek says from behind us.
Vadim turns.
Marek immediately reaches for a glass of wine and develops an intense interest in it.
Anya runs to Mila and wraps both arms around her waist. “I helped with the cake.”
Nadia closes her eyes. “You put three strawberries on it.”
“I helped.”
“You also ate four.”
“I was checking them.”
Mila laughs. It’s quiet and brief, but everyone in the room seems to notice, even Vadim himself.
His face softens in that almost imperceptible way I’ve learned to recognize, and when Mila moves toward him after Anya finally releases her, he kisses the top of her head and tells her happy birthday without making the moment bigger than she can tolerate.
The evening becomes surprisingly easy after that.
Anton appears to have been ordered into civilian clothing and looks personally offended by the concept.
Marek tells a story about Vadim at twenty-two that Vadim interrupts twice to correct and once to threaten him over.
Iosef brings Mila a mathematics puzzle disguised inside an elaborate wooden box, which makes Anton accuse him of giving homework as a birthday gift until Mila opens it and smiles more genuinely than she has all night.
I sit between Anya and Vadim. Anya steals icing from my plate, and Vadim catches her.
“She gave it to me,” Anya says.
“I watched you take it.”
“You weren’t looking.”
“I’m always looking.”
“That sounds creepy,” I tell him.
Anya nods solemnly. “Very creepy.”
Vadim looks between us. “This alliance concerns me.”
“You created it,” I say.
His hand settles briefly on my thigh beneath the table.
It’s not sexual. Not exactly. Just a quiet touch, his thumb moving once against my knee as though he needs to remind himself that I’m there.
That makes what I’m hiding feel worse.
I look across the table and see Mila opening another gift while Nadia adjusts the candle that keeps leaning sideways, and for a few precious minutes the Petrov photograph retreats far enough that I can pretend the evening is exactly what it looks like.
A family celebrating a birthday.
A man beside me who has spent most of his life terrifying people and is now pretending not to care that his youngest sister is happy.
A little girl with frosting on her nose.
Something dangerously close to belonging.
It’s after dinner, when the cake has been cut and Anya has finally been convinced that eating a third slice would constitute a medical emergency, that I find Vadim alone near the terrace doors with a glass in his hand.
He looks relaxed. As relaxed as Vadim ever becomes.
His jacket is gone, his sleeves pushed back, silver hair slightly disordered because Anya attempted to place a paper birthday crown on his head earlier and he tolerated it for exactly eleven seconds before Marek took a photograph.
I should choose another moment.
Instead, I walk toward him. “Can I ask you something?”
His eyes move to my face. “You generally do regardless.”
“That was almost affectionate.”
“Don’t get accustomed to it.”
I stop beside him and look through the glass toward the garden. The grounds are darker now, lit only by lamps along the pathways and the faint glow from the house spilling across the nearest terrace.
“When can I leave?”
The change in him is immediate. The ease disappears from his face, and his glass lowers slightly. “Sloane.”
“I’m asking seriously.”
“I know.”
“My brother is at home. My life is there. I’ve been here long enough that I don’t even know what I’m supposed to tell people anymore.”
“You are safer here.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
His jaw tightens. “The answer has not changed.”
I turn toward him. “So no.”
“For now.”
“That means no.”
“It means until I know who placed the tracker in your bag and how Petrov knew our landing point, you remain somewhere I can protect you.”
The name hits differently now. I force myself not to react. “You can’t keep me here indefinitely.”
“I’m not keeping you prisoner.”
I laugh softly because the alternative is shouting. “Really?”
His eyes narrow. “You have access to the house, the grounds, your phone, anything you ask for.”
“Except the gate.”
“Sloane.”
“Except leaving.”
He says nothing. That silence answers more clearly than he could.
I step back. “Do you even hear yourself?”
“I hear you perfectly.”
“No, I don’t think you do. You think because you’re keeping me comfortable it somehow changes the fact that I’m not allowed to decide where I live.”
“There are people trying to kill me who have already used you once.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough.”
“And apparently that means you get to decide everything.”
His expression hardens. “When your decision puts you in danger, yes.”
I stare at him. “There it is.”
“What?”
“The part where you stop pretending.”
Something in his face closes.
I know I’ve pushed too far, but at the moment, I don’t care.
“I need air.”
“Sloane.”
I turn away. He catches my wrist, but lightly enough that I pull free without effort.
“Not now,” I tell him.
He releases me.
That somehow makes me angrier.
I walk through the terrace doors and down the steps into the garden before he can say anything else. The cool air hits my face immediately, and I keep walking.
Not toward the gate.
I’m angry, not stupid. At least that’s what I tell myself.
The garden stretches around the house in carefully maintained paths bordered by hedges, flowering shrubs and old trees whose branches disappear into the dark sky.
Somewhere behind me, music is still playing faintly through the open terrace doors, and every few seconds I hear a burst of laughter from inside.
I should go back. I should apologize.
I should tell Vadim about Viktor.
Instead, I keep moving. The farther I get from the house, the quieter everything becomes. I’m passing the eastern hedge when movement catches my eye.
At first I think it’s one of the security men, but then the figure steps into the path.
Camille.