Chapter 18
CHLOE
The clock on the mantel said past midnight, and I had given up pretending I was not counting the minutes.
Sienna was curled in the opposite armchair, bare feet tucked under her, a mug warming her hands.
I had one too. Mine had gone cold ages ago.
The sitting room was dim, only the two lamps on, the fire down to glowing logs, the long windows behind us black with night.
Late autumn pressed against the glass like something that wanted in.
"They will come back," Sienna said, not looking up.
"I know."
"You are doing the thing with your jaw."
I let it go. I had not even noticed.
We had been like this for two hours. Tea, lamps low, the compound quiet around us in that particular way a house gets when its owners are not in it.
Mikhail had called the recon at the tail of an argument I had only caught the edges of.
Daniil had gone because Daniil went where his brother went.
They had been out since just after dinner, and the kitchen staff had stopped offering food an hour ago and just kept the kettle warm.
I had not eaten. Sienna had pretended to.
Sienna lifted her eyes over the rim of her mug. "So. You two okay now?"
"We are getting there."
She nodded slowly, considering me. "Yeah. You look blooming."
A warmth climbed up my neck before I could stop it. I looked into my cold tea so I could say the truth without watching her watch me say it.
"I love that even with his memory gone, he still wanted me the same way. Whatever it is he feels for me, it was not in his head. It was in the rest of him. That is the part I keep coming back to."
Sienna was quiet for a beat. Then her mouth pulled into a soft, knowing curve.
"He is still going to be jealous of anyone who breathes near you."
I laughed once, low. "Yeah. I would be lying if I said I hated it."
I was a little proud of it, honestly. Of being the thing he reached for first, even when he did not know my name.
The front of the house gave a sound. A door, men's boots on stone, the bolt on the inner door sliding back. Sienna's eyes moved to mine.
We were already standing when they walked in.
Mikhail came first, his coat half off one shoulder, hair stuck to his temple, a cut along his eyebrow that had clotted but not closed.
He wore the smile he used when he wanted no one to fuss.
He was not pulling it off. Behind him, Daniil.
His left cheekbone was going purple under the skin.
His lip was split at the corner and still wet.
His jacket was torn at the elbow, the wool gaping in a way that turned my stomach because I knew what kind of fall did that.
His right hand hung at his side, knuckles raw and shining.
I did not feel my legs move. I was just suddenly closer to him.
"What happened?"
Mikhail blew out a breath, dragging his palm down his face. "We should have done it quietly. Someone knew our plan." Another breath, harder. "Fuck the traitor inside."
Daniil's gray-green eyes stayed on me. He kept his voice low, for me, not for the room.
"It is just bruises. Nothing worse."
I nodded once. I could not trust the rest of my face yet.
"Come on. Your room, so I can patch you up." I made myself look at the other two. "Night. Both of you."
Sienna squeezed my elbow as I passed. Mikhail caught Daniil's shoulder for one beat, brother to brother, the kind of touch that said the rest later.
I closed the door of Daniil's room behind us and the world got smaller.
He sat at the edge of the bed without being told, the way a man sits when he has been hit enough times to know the order of things.
He shrugged the torn jacket off one shoulder and then the other and let it fall behind him on the mattress.
The shirt underneath had a smear at the collar that was either his blood or someone else's.
I did not ask. I went to the bathroom and came back with the first-aid kit and a clean cloth wrapped around a handful of ice from the bar fridge.
I knelt in front of him.
My hands did the work. Antiseptic on a cotton pad, then onto the split lip, my fingertip steadying his chin.
He did not flinch. My own breath went shallow at the tiny twitch in his jaw when the sting hit.
I pressed a butterfly closure over the cut at his cheekbone, smoothing the edges with my thumb so it would hold.
The bruise under it was already deepening, blue blooming along the bone.
I lifted his right hand into my lap and laid the cold cloth over the knuckles, and his fingers curled half around mine like he was the one steadying me.
The old scar on his left index knuckle caught the lamplight, pale and familiar. I touched it without meaning to. It was the only hurt of his I had ever made peace with.
"Do not worry so much, Chloe."
Something inside me, something I had been holding shut for two hours, gave.
The first tear was quiet. The second was not. I bent my head over his hand so he would not see, and then I gave up on hiding it.
"How am I supposed to not worry? You're hurt. Why won't you be more careful with yourself?"
"I am sorry."
That made it worse. I lifted my face to him because I needed him to see it, all of it, the wet on my cheeks and the rest.
"Don't be sorry. Be careful. I'm scared, Daniil. I am not doing three months ago again. I wake up every morning and the first thing I have to check is whether you're still here. I can't lose you twice."
He moved. He did not stand, he just hauled me up against him by the backs of my arms, and his good hand went into my hair and held my head to his shoulder hard enough to hurt a little. It was not gentle. It was the way he held a thing he had decided was his.
"I promise you. They will not put a hand on me again."
I believed him because I needed to.
He shifted us back onto the bed and pulled the blanket over both of us without letting go.
We lay like that, my ear flat against the side of his chest, his palm at the nape of my neck, his thumb tracing slow along my hairline.
His heartbeat was steadier than mine. After a minute mine started to match it.
The lamp on the nightstand made the room small and gold.
"Did you know we had a fight before you disappeared?"
His thumb paused, then kept moving. He did not answer. He was waiting.
"You walked into the restaurant where I was having dinner with my cousin.
He had just flown in from Singapore. You did not know who he was.
You did not ask. You hit him in the back booth before he could say his own name.
I went out to the sidewalk after you and the rain had started and I told you that you had hurt my family.
I told you that I had asked you to take the man off me and you had not done it.
You grabbed my arm in front of the whole restaurant and I said the words I had never said to you before.
I told you that you were scaring me. I told you not to follow me.
I told you that if your man walked me to my door I would call the police.
And then we did not speak for three days.
The morning of the fourth day was the day you got into the car. "
I had told it cleanly. I had not cried through it. I was proud of that.
"I used to think you being obsessed with me was a problem. After I lost you? I figured out pretty fast that I'd take you clingy over a ghost any day of the week."
He did not laugh. He did something better. He drew a breath in and let it out slow, and his hand at my nape tightened like he was anchoring himself to the words.
Then he smiled. Small. Sweet at the corner of his mouth that was not split.
"You like me?"
I nodded against his collarbone. I felt his next breath move through his chest, against my cheek.
"Me too."
It was so small. It almost broke me.
"How can you be sure? You don't even remember me."
He turned his face into the top of my hair. His voice came down through the bone of his chest into my ear.
"My head might not remember you. My heart did."
I lifted my face. The scar at his temple caught the lamplight. I kissed him carefully, mindful of the split, slow and tender, and he kissed me back the same way. Neither of us was in a state for more. Neither of us needed more.
"Rest your body," I said into the corner of his jaw.
He made a sound that was almost a laugh and not quite, and his hand slid down my back and stayed. I watched him fall asleep. I kept my palm flat over his heart so I would feel it if it stopped. It did not. It went on, slow and certain, under my hand.
I slept eventually. I did not remember closing my eyes.
I woke before the sky did. Daniil's breathing was deep and even, his bruised cheek turned away from the pillow so the closure would not lift. I eased out from under his arm an inch at a time, then tucked the blanket back where I had been. He did not stir.
I pulled on jeans and a sweater and my coat and went out.
The grounds at that hour were a different country.
Grass white at the tips with frost, bare trees standing black against a sky that had not made up its mind yet about being morning.
My breath was a soft cloud in front of me.
I walked because my body wanted to walk, past the kitchen garden, past the line of yew, toward the long low outbuilding where the cars were kept.
I came around the back corner of it and stopped.
Pyotr was there, his broad back to me, phone to his ear. He had not heard me coming. The gravel had given me away to no one because I had stepped onto the strip of grass without thinking.
I held very still.
His voice was lower than the one he used at the gate. Harder, too. Stripped.
"Tomasz. They got back near midnight. Both walking, both carrying marks." A pause. "No. The brothers do not suspect me. Not a glance, not a question. Mikhail is blaming a leak from the office side."
Another pause. He shifted his weight.
"The recon last night went the way you wanted. Bruised, not buried. We can move on the rest whenever you say."
My fingertips went cold. My breath had stopped without my permission. I made it start again, slow and quiet, through my nose.
He listened to whatever came back down the line. He grunted once.
"Understood."
He took the phone from his ear and slid it into the right pocket of his coat. He rolled his neck. He started to turn.
I pulled a clean face on between one breath and the next. I stepped back onto the gravel so my next step would crunch, and I called out at a polite distance, light and a little sleepy.
"Pyotr? Morning."
He turned the rest of the way. His face did the thing a face does when a man is rearranging it fast. Then he found his polite smile and put it on.
"Miss Chloe. You are up early."
"Couldn't sleep." I walked toward him, easy, hands in my coat pockets so he would not see them shake. "I actually came out hoping to find you. I owed you a thank-you for yesterday. My ankle, at the garden. You were very kind. Daniil was not."
A breath of relief moved through his shoulders. He had not known that was coming.
"It was nothing, miss."
"It was not nothing." I tipped my head, smiling the smile I used at brunches in another life. Underneath it I was counting his pockets. Right side, phone. Coat half open. "He gets like that with anyone who stands too close to me. I keep telling him it is rude. He does not listen."
Pyotr's mouth softened. "He is protective."
"He is a menace." I let my laugh come small and warm. I was close to him now, close enough to smell the cold on his coat. I tilted my face up at him, a degree more interested than a wife should be, just enough. "Anyway. I wanted to say it properly. Before the house wakes up and I get shy about it."
He almost laughed. His guard came down by inches.
I rose up on the balls of my feet, one hand light on the front of his coat for balance, and pressed a quick friendly kiss to his cheek the way a sister might.
He smelled like the cold and like aftershave worn down to almost nothing.
My other hand was already moving. The angle of my shoulder hid it from his eye line.
Two fingers into the right pocket, the slim weight of the phone against my knuckles, lift, and out, and into my own coat pocket in one motion as I came back down off my toes.
The whole thing took less time than the kiss did.
I smiled at him like I had done nothing at all.
"Thank you, Pyotr. Really."
"Anytime, miss."
I turned and walked back the way I had come.
I kept my pace easy. I did not look over my shoulder.
The phone was a small hard rectangle against my hip through the lining of my pocket, my heart was beating in the back of my throat, and somewhere under my ribs a small bright thing had turned on that felt a lot like fear and a lot like resolve at the same time.
I had thought I was the soft one in this house. I had let everyone, including me, believe it. I was going to walk this phone straight up the stairs and put it in Daniil's hand.