NINA #2
“What does that mean?”
“It means Meredith audits the workload and makes a recommendation,” Luka says. “It means HR documents the scope. It means I stay out of the formal decision.”
I stare at him. “You thought of that quickly.”
“I run a company,” Luka says.
“Sometimes I forget because you spend so much time behaving like a criminally intense boyfriend.”
His face stills at the word.
Boyfriend.
I didn’t mean to say it. Or maybe I did.
We both notice it.
The room becomes very quiet.
Luka speaks first. “Is that what I’m?”
My heart starts beating fast.
I look at the laptop because the laptop has never asked me difficult emotional questions while looking like a dangerous older man who ate me out in a guest room to make me sleep.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Luka says, “All right.”
I look up. “That’s it?”
Luka says, “I’m learning not to demand answers from injured women.”
I almost smile, but then sadness catches me before humor can.“I don’t know what I’m allowed to want.”
His face changes. He leans forward slightly. “Allowed by whom?”
“Myself,” I say. “My brother. The office. Your life. Your mother’s terrifying slippers.”
His mouth moves faintly. “The slippers have no authority.”
“They have presence,” I say.
He watches me, and something in his expression softens so much that I have to look away.
I’m saved by a knock.
Pavel appears in the doorway, his face unreadable. “Boss.”
Luka’s face changes at once.
The man sitting across from me, the one who had been talking about my job and my wants and whether he counted as my boyfriend, disappears behind something harder.
“What?” Luka asks.
Pavel’s eyes flick to me, then back to Luka. “The prisoner is talking now.”
I go still. For one second, I don’t understand.
Then I remember.
The man in my apartment. The man who hit me from behind. The man Luka found there.
I had almost forgotten about him.
Not completely. That would be impossible. But I had pushed him into the back of my head because Misha was missing, because Alina had vanished, because my apartment had been destroyed and my life had become too crowded with fear to hold every piece at the front.
My hand moves to the back of my head before I can stop it.
Luka notices. His face darkens.
“He’s here?” I ask.
Neither man answers fast enough.
I stare at Luka. “The man who attacked me s in this house?”
Luka says, “He’s secured.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Pavel says, “He’s not in the main house.”
I look at him. “That is also not what I asked.”
Luka stands. “Stay here.”
The words are quiet. They still feel like a door shutting in my face.
“No.”
Luka looks at me. “Nina.”
“Don’t Nina me. He attacked me.”
“And I will handle it,” Luka says.
“Sure you will,” I say.
His jaw tightens. “This is not the same.”
“It always becomes the same,” I say. “You tell me I matter, and then the second anything real happens, you put me in a room and close the door.”
Pavel looks like he would rather be anywhere else.
Luka says, “You have a concussion.”
“I’m not asking to fight him,” I say. “I’m asking not to be treated like furniture.”
Luka’s face hardens, and for a second I think he is going to refuse anyway.
Then Pavel interrupts. “Boss, he may stop talking if we wait.”
That ends the discussion for Luka.
He looks at me. “Stay here.”
Then he turns and leaves with Pavel.
I sit very still. The door remains open, but it does not matter. I have still been shut out.
For about ten seconds, I try to be sensible.
I tell myself I’m recovering. I tell myself Luka is trying to protect me. I tell myself hearing whatever that man says will not help my headache or my fear or my missing brother.
Then I remember standing in my apartment doorway, seeing the living room destroyed, and waking up in a hospital bed.
I close the laptop. This is a bad idea.
I know it is a bad idea while I’m doing it.
I stand too fast, have to hold the back of the chair for a second, then breathe until the room steadies. After that, I move carefully to the doorway and look into the hall.
No one is there. I follow at a distance.
Luka and Pavel are already near the far end of the corridor. They don’t look back.
I keep to the wall, moving slowly enough that my head does not punish me and quietly enough that I feel ridiculous.
They turn down a corridor I have never been through. Then another.
The house changes the farther we go.
The warm guest wing gives way to older stone, narrower halls, fewer lamps. The floors become colder under my slippers. At the end of the hall, Pavel opens a door that looks like part of the wall, and both men disappear through it.
I wait until the door is almost closed.
Then I slip through after them.
There’s a stairwell beyond it.
Basement.
Of course, Luka’s house has a secret basement.
At this point, I would be more surprised if it didn’t.
I keep one hand on the railing and go down slowly. Voices rise before I reach the bottom. Luka’s voice first, low and controlled. Pavel’s next, quieter. Then another voice, rough and broken with fear.
The man.
I stop before the stairs open fully into the room and press myself against the wall.
The space below is larger than I expected.
Not a dungeon, exactly, because apparently even Luka’s terrifying basement has good lighting and clean floors, but there is nothing warm about it.
A chair sits in the middle of the room. The man from my apartment is tied to it, face bruised, one eye swollen, wrists bound to the arms.
My stomach turns.
I recognize him even though I only saw him for one second before he hit me.
Luka stands in front of him with his jacket off, sleeves rolled, shoulder bandaged under his shirt. Pavel stands to the side with a tablet in one hand.
The man is crying.
He looks exhausted and terrified, like he has spent the last four days learning exactly what it means to be locked inside Luka Kazan’s house.
The man says, “Please.”
Luka grunts, “Are you ready to talk now?”
The man nods quickly. “Please. Please, I’ll talk.”
Luka says, “Start with the apartment.”
The man’s swollen eye flicks toward Pavel, then back to Luka. “I never meant to hurt her.”
My hand tightens around the railing. Luka goes very still.
The man rushes on. “She surprised me. I thought the place was empty. I swear. I was told she wouldn’t come back yet.”
Luka takes one step closer. “Who told you that?”
The man’s breathing turns ragged. “I don’t know.”
Luka says, “Wrong answer.”
“I don’t know his real name,” the man says. “I was contacted through a middleman. I was paid to search the apartment, take anything from the brother’s bag, any phone, any papers, any drive. I wasn’t supposed to touch her.”
Pavel looks at the tablet. “He was also present the night of the garage attack.”
My breath catches.
Luka does not turn around.
Pavel continues, “We confirmed it from the partial footage and the vehicle records. He was the getaway driver.”
The man starts shaking his head. “I didn’t shoot anyone.”
Luka says, “You drove the men who did.”
“I didn’t know they would shoot,” the man argues.
Luka says, “You followed a car into a private garage with armed men and thought they were going to deliver flowers?”
The man flinches.
Pavel says, “The payment trail matches both jobs. Same channel. Same handler.”
Luka’s voice drops. “Who paid you?”
The man closes his eyes.
Luka says, “Open your eyes.”
The man opens them.
“Who paid you?” Luka barks.
The man’s mouth trembles.
For one second, I know the answer will be Roman.
It has to be Roman.
Every road has been leading there. Alina, the gala, the dance, the warning, the secret card still hidden inside my purse upstairs.
The man whispers, “Misha Hale.”