Luka #3
“The one that says you’ve already decided what has to be done.”
I look at the laptop.
Misha’s frozen image looks back at me.
For years, I would have answered this without hesitation.
A man tied to an attack on me, tied to a break-in, tied to a missing woman, tied to a threat against someone under my protection, would be found and dealt with.
The relationship would not matter. The history would not matter.
If anything, betrayal by a trusted man would make the response worse.
But Misha is not only a trusted man.
He’s Nina’s brother.
He’s the man she loves more simply than she will ever love me.
And if I go after him now, even carefully, even with the intention of bringing him back alive, Nina will feel the distance between us widen with every order I give.
“I’m going to find him.”
Nina looks at me. “How?”
I say, “Every way available to me.”
Her face tightens. “That is not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I can give you.”
She stands too quickly, and her hand goes to the desk when her balance shifts.
I move forward on instinct.
She lifts her other hand. “Don’t.”
I stop.
She closes her eyes for a second, breathes through the dizziness, then opens them again.
Nina says, “If you hurt him—”
“I’m not going after him to hurt him,” I say.
“You say that now,” Nina says.
My jaw tightens.
She says, “You say that while we’re standing in a study. What happens when your men find him? What happens if he runs? What happens if Pavel hands you another file and says it proves Misha did everything? What happens if Misha panics because he thinks you’ll kill him?”
I say, “Then he should not run.”
Nina stares at me.
The second the words leave my mouth, I know they were wrong.
Her face shuts down. “That’s what I mean,” Nina says.
I say, “Nina—”
“No,” Nina says. “That is exactly what I mean.”
She steps back from the desk, slower this time.
The laptop screen remains turned toward her chair.
Misha’s face remains frozen there.
She looks at it one more time, and the disbelief comes back heavier now, mixed with something close to grief.
“If your trust on your oldest friend can break so easily, I don’t think I know you at all.”
She’s standing only a few feet away, but she feels farther from me than she did when she was on the dance floor with Roman.
There, I could cross the room and reach her.
Now I’m standing in front of her with evidence against her brother, a dead man in my basement, and the knowledge that my next move may make her hate me.
I say, “You should go back upstairs.”
She gives a small, tired laugh. “Of course.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It never is,” Nina says.
I step closer despite myself. “You’re still recovering.”
“And you are still sending me away when things get difficult,” Nina says.
I stop.
She looks at me for a long moment. Then she says, “I don’t know how to stand beside you when the person you’re hunting is my brother.”
The words are quiet.
Straightforward.
They do more damage than anger would have.
“I don’t know how to let him disappear when every trail leads back to him.”
She nods once, but it’s not agreement.
It’s acceptance of the problem—the kind of acceptance that does not fix anything.
For a second, I think she might cry. Instead, she straightens her shoulders and turns toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
Nina says, “Upstairs.”
“I will send someone with you.”
She stops, her hand on the door handle. Then she turns her head slightly. “No,” Nina says. “I know the way.”
She opens the door and leaves before I can answer.
Pavel is waiting outside.
Nina does not look at him.
She walks past him down the corridor, careful and steady, one hand briefly touching the wall when the dizziness catches up with her.
I take one step toward her. Then I stop.
Because if I follow her now, I will ask her to understand. If I ask her to understand, she will look at me like I’m asking her to choose between me and Misha. And if she has to choose today, I already know I will lose.
Pavel comes into the room slowly.
He sees the laptop turned toward the empty chair.
He sees my face.
Pavel says, “Do you want me to continue tracing Hale?”
I look at the doorway Nina walked through.
For one brief second, I let myself remember Misha as he was before all of this.
Laughing in my kitchen. Standing beside my mother on her birthday.
Carrying a half-asleep little Nina from my family’s old sitting room to his car while she complained into his shoulder.
Telling me, years later, that if I ever dragged her into my world, he would kill me himself.
Maybe that was not a joke. Maybe it was a warning.
I turn back to Pavel. “Yes.”
Pavel says, “And if we find him?”
I look at him. There’s a pause before I answer. “Bring him to me alive.”
Pavel nods. “Understood.”
I hear the word and almost tell him I’m sick of it.
Instead, I close the laptop with Misha’s face still on the screen.
I’m about to go after the brother of the woman I’m in love with.
There is no way to do that without losing something.