29. Cora
CORA
He was standing outside my door when I opened it, no phone in his hand, no car idling at the curb the way it usually did when he only had twenty minutes to give me between one crisis and the next, and something about the stillness of him told me, even before he spoke, that this visit was going to be different from the last two weeks of short calls and shorter goodbyes.
"I should have called first," he said.
"You've never called first in your life. Why start now?"
"Because I wanted the chance to leave, if you told me to, before I said any of what I actually came to say." He said it plainly, no charm in it, no easy line waiting to soften the edges. "May I come in?"
I stepped back and let him, and he crossed my living room like a man walking into a courtroom instead of an apartment he had spent half the last few months in, and for once I did not have a joke ready, which almost never happened to me.
"You've been distant," I said, before he could start. "Weeks of it. Shorter calls, shorter visits, that look on your face like you're doing math I'm not allowed to see the numbers for. I've been telling myself it was work. I don't actually think it was work."
"It wasn't only work." He sat on the edge of my couch, shoulders bowed forward, and for a long moment he studied his own hands like they belonged to someone else.
"There's a leak inside my organization. Someone selling information to a man named Basile, who wants what's mine and has wanted it for longer than you've been alive.
I've known something was wrong for weeks. I only confirmed who two nights ago."
"Who?"
"Kirill." The name came out rough, like it cost him something physical to say it. "A man I buried his father for. A man I would have called family before I would have called half my own blood family."
"Dmitri."
"I'm not finished, and if I stop now I don't think I'll manage to start again.
" He looked up, and whatever he saw on my face seemed to steady him instead of stopping him.
"I followed him two nights ago. Watched him meet with Basile from behind a stack of pallets like a man half his rank, because I no longer trust anyone enough to send in my place.
I heard enough to know they're planning something, and not enough to prove it to anyone who'd need proof.
I know the target. It's the gala, four weeks from now.
A room full of guests who trust me because you built something worth attending, and every guard I employ watching the doors instead of watching me. "
The room went very quiet. Somewhere outside a car alarm cycled through its complaint and gave up.
"You're telling me someone is planning to kill you at my event."
"Yes."
"And you found this out two days ago and you're only telling me now?"
"Part of it goes back further than that.
" His jaw worked once before the rest of it came out.
"Two weeks ago, Nik brought me proof of the leak itself, before I had a name to put to it.
For about five seconds, sitting in my own office, I let myself wonder if it could be you.
Not seriously. Not for longer than it takes to breathe in and out once.
But it happened, and I hated myself for it more than I've hated myself for almost anything, and instead of telling you that, I did what I've always done.
I went quiet. I decided silence was safer than handing you a truth that ugly. "
"You thought I might be the leak."
"For five seconds. Out of two weeks. I'm not telling you that to be forgiven for it.
I'm telling you because you asked me once, a long time ago, never to let you find out the hard way that I was protecting you by lying to you, and I did exactly that anyway, and I would rather you be furious with me for the true version than grateful for a kind one I made up. "
I sat down across from him, my legs suddenly unwilling to hold me up through the rest of this conversation standing.
"That's the most insulting thing you've ever said to me, and somehow also the least insulting thing you've ever said to me, and I need a minute to figure out how both those things are true at once. "
"Take as long as you need."
"You seriously thought I was selling secrets to a man trying to kill you. Me. The woman who color codes her spice rack and cries at dog food commercials."
"For five seconds."
"You keep saying five seconds like it's a legal defense."
"It's the only defense I have. I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen, and I'm not going to pretend it was longer than it was either.
" He reached across the space between us, slow, giving me every chance to pull back, and when I didn't, he took my hand in both of his.
"I have spent twenty-three years deciding that the safest thing I could do for anyone I loved was give them less of myself, not more.
Silence when it should have been honesty.
Distance when it should have been you, in this room, knowing exactly what I know the moment I know it.
I am done doing that to you. I would rather you hate me for the truth than love a version of me that isn't real. "
"I don't hate you." My voice cracked around the edges of it, quieter than I meant it to sound. "I'm terrified, and I'm angry that you carried this alone for two weeks like it was your job to bleed quietly so I wouldn't have to watch, and I don't hate you."
"I know I don't deserve the second part yet."
"You're getting it anyway. That's sort of the problem with loving someone, Dmitri.
The deserving part comes later, if it comes at all.
I'm not waiting for a permission slip." I turned my hand over in his, lacing our fingers together properly instead of just letting him hold it.
"Tell me the rest. All of it. Don't ration it out to protect me from feelings you've already decided I can't handle. "
So he did, slowly, in a voice that lost its careful edges somewhere around the tenth minute, laying out the wire transfers and the warehouse and the four weeks between now and the one night that mattered more than any other on either of our calendars.
I made myself take in every word of it the same way I read a contract before I sign it, missing nothing, circling back twice.
When he finally ran out of things to confess, he looked more wrung out than I had ever seen him, not after negotiations, not after threats, not after anything.
"There's something I should have told you already.
" My pulse was doing something complicated, but my voice held.
"A woman came into my office weeks ago, before you'd ever said Kirill's name to me.
Booked a consultation under a fake name, asked one question too many.
She came back a few days later at the venue and told me the truth.
Federal agent. She wouldn't say whose account she was investigating, only that this event was about to sit in the middle of something a lot bigger than a seating chart, and that I should walk away from it while I still could. "
Dmitri went very still in the specific way that meant he was taking in far more than his face let on.
"Her name?"
"Reyes."
"Then she already had enough to come to you directly without needing anything from me." Something moved through his jaw, grim rather than surprised. "That confirms more than I wanted confirmed tonight."
"I should have told you the same afternoon instead of sitting on it for weeks."
"You did exactly what I did. You decided you could carry it alone so I wouldn't have to." He said it without any heat in it at all, just a tired kind of recognition. "We are apparently both very bad, so far, at the thing we just promised each other we would get better at."
"I owe you a second apology, then," I said. "I've been telling myself your distance was about me. That I did something. I spent two weeks composing increasingly unhinged theories instead of just asking you directly, because apparently we're both allergic to the same disease."
"What disease is that?"
"Deciding the other person can't handle the truth, and then acting wounded when they find out we decided that for them." I studied him without saying anything right away. "We're going to be terrible at this part for a while. The honesty part. We should probably keep score."
"Keep score of what?"
"Who apologizes better. I'm extremely competitive, and I have a feeling I'm about to have a lot of practice."
That surprised a laugh out of him, low and real, some of the tension finally leaving his shoulders. "You'd win. You already have more range than I do. I only have one register."
"Grim and devastatingly handsome?"
"I was going to say sorry and sorrier, but I'll accept your version."
"I accept your apology, for the record. The five second one.
I'm filing it as insufficient evidence and moving on.
" I leaned forward and kissed him, soft, no urgency behind it, just the simple fact of wanting to be close to him after two weeks of feeling like he'd been standing on the other side of glass.
"Stay tonight. Not because you need permission to leave in a hurry.
Because I want you here in the morning."
He kissed me back like he'd been waiting the whole conversation for exactly that invitation, unhurried in a way that felt entirely new between us, nothing like the first frantic night in this same apartment, nothing like the laughing, teasing hours at the lake house.
This was quieter than both, a patience that came from two people finally done performing certainty they didn't feel, not from restraint at all.
He undressed me slowly, one button at a time, like he was memorizing an apology with his hands instead of his mouth, and I let him, matching his pace instead of rushing past it the way I usually rushed past anything that asked me to sit still inside a feeling.