Ruslan
By the fourth day, I know less than I did on the first.
That’s not true, technically. I know the two men who came into the library were not professionals I would have hired.
I know one of them is dead, one of them disappeared before my people reached the alley, and both of them were paid through an account that should not exist anymore.
I know the moved book was not a warning for me.
It was bait.
Whoever touched the drop wanted me at the library on the wrong day, without my usual people in place, surrounded by civilians.
That narrows the list.
Not enough.
I stand in the downstairs office of the house by the sea while Stepan spreads photographs across the table.
Faces. Cars. Bank trails. Blurred stills from security cameras nearby because the library footage itself is a problem now.
The police took the servers before my men could get to them. Not ideal, but not impossible.
Stepan taps one image with two fingers. “This one worked for Grekov three years ago.”
I look at the photograph. “Worked for?”
“Temporary crew. Collections. A few warehouse jobs.”
“Alive?”
“For now.”
“Find him.”
“I’m trying.” Stepan lifts his eyes. “Everyone is trying.”
That’s the closest he comes to telling me to be patient. He knows better than to use the word.
I lean back against the table and look at the line of faces again. None of them matter. They are hands. Paid hands. I need the man who opened the door and pointed them in my direction.
Stepan waits a moment before saying, “And the girl?”
I look at Stepan.
He doesn’t back away from the question. “Why is she still here?”
“She was seen with me.”
“That was four days ago.”
“She can still be used.”
“So move her somewhere else.”
I say nothing.
Stepan watches me with the patience of a man who has decided the safest way to test a blade is to touch it very carefully. “Or send her home with two men outside her building. Or put her with her friend. Or put her in one of the apartments we use for witnesses. There are options.”
“I know the options.”
“Then choose one.”
I pick up one of the photographs and look at it, though I have already memorized the face.
The truth is ugly because it is simple. I don’t know what to do with her.
Keeping Zoya here is not practical. It makes the house noisier without her saying much.
It gives my men something to notice. It gives Stepan something to ask about.
It puts her close enough that I know when she comes downstairs for tea at three in the morning, close enough that I see the circles under her eyes getting worse, close enough that I hear her laugh once on the phone with Karina and feel relief like it belongs to me.
Sending her away is also not practical.
That’s what I tell myself.
The men who came for me saw her. The mole may have seen more. Her apartment isn’t secure, her routines are obvious, and she has no idea how to live like a target.
All true. Not the whole truth.
Stepan lets the silence stretch, then exhales through his nose. “You don’t trust her.”
“No.”
“But you don’t think she’s involved.”
“No.”
“And yet she stays.”
I set the photograph down. “Careful.”
He nods once, not apologizing. “Always.”
He leaves a few minutes later to make calls. I remain at the table, staring at names that refuse to become answers.
By evening, rain starts over the sea. It hits the windows lightly at first, then harder, turning the view beyond the glass into a dark blur.
The house becomes quieter in bad weather.
Men lower their voices. Doors close softer.
Even the water sounds closer, as if the whole coast has moved in around us.
At eight, Anya tells me dinner is ready.
At eight fifteen, Zoya does not come down.
She’s been eating with the rest of us for two nights now, barely speaking, mostly pushing food around her plate while pretending not to listen whenever Russian cuts through the room. I could have food sent up. I don’t.
I go myself.
Her room is at the far end of the second floor, facing the water. I knock once.
No answer.
I knock again. “Zoya.”
Still nothing.
The door isn’t locked. I open it.
She isn’t in bed. Not in the chair by the window. Not in the bathroom.
For one second, the room empties of sound.
Then I see the balcony door is cracked open.
I cross the room and step outside. She’s sitting on the covered part of the balcony, curled sideways in one of the wide chairs with a blanket around her shoulders and a bottle of wine on the small table beside her.
The glass in her hand is half-full. Her hair is down, loose around her face, and she’s wearing the same soft cardigan she had on earlier, buttoned wrong near the middle.
She looks at the sea instead of at me. “The library shut down,” she says.
I stop beside the door.
Her voice is calm in the way voices get when calm is the last thing holding them together.
“Permanently?” I ask.
“That’s what the email says.” She lifts her phone from her lap but doesn’t show me the screen. “The board had been looking for reasons to cut funding. Apparently gunfire is a good one.”
I say nothing because there’s nothing useful to say.
She laughs once, softly and without humor. “Sorry. That was unfair. I know it wasn’t the board’s fault people shot at you.”
“It wasn’t your fault either.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“No,” I say. “You implied it.”
That gets her to look at me.
Her eyes are wet, but she’s not crying. The difference matters. She’s holding herself very still, the way people do when one wrong movement might make them fall apart.
“I lost my job,” she says. “I lost my apartment too, probably, because I can’t pay rent in the city without that job. I can’t go home, according to you. I can’t tell my mother anything real. Karina keeps texting me every hour like she’s afraid I’ve been murdered between replies.”
She looks down at the glass in her hand. “And the worst part is, I keep thinking I should be grateful because I’m alive.”
I step onto the balcony fully and close the door behind me to keep out the cold draft.
“How much have you had?” I ask.
Her mouth twists. “That’s what you’re starting with?”
“Yes.”
“Of course it is.”
“How much, Zoya?”
She looks at the bottle, then back at the sea. “Two glasses. Maybe two and a half. I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You’ve been drinking alone in the cold.”
“I’ve been held in a mafia safe house for four days. I think I’m allowed a glass of wine.”
“You are allowed many things.”
“Am I?”
I don’t answer at once.
That is answer enough.
She laughs again, but this time it breaks a little. She puts the glass on the table and presses both hands over her face. “I didn’t mean that,” she says into her palms. “I don’t even know what I mean anymore.”
I should leave. Send Anya up with food. Put two men on the hall and let Zoya sleep off the wine and panic.
Instead I sit in the chair beside her.
She lowers her hands and looks at me like she didn’t expect that.
I rest my forearms on my knees. “What did the email say?”
“That the Alderwood branch will remain closed indefinitely, then ten minutes later another email came saying all staff positions are terminated effective immediately because of budget restructuring.” She swallows.
“Budget restructuring. Like we’re boxes on a spreadsheet.
Like Mrs. Alvarez didn’t work there for twenty-seven years.
Like Elise didn’t get shot in the arm trying to help a student hide under the front desk. ”
“Elise is alive.” I say this because there are no staff or civilian casualties at the library. That part has never bothered me before, but this time I made sure to follow the news enough to keep track of the aftermath.
“I know.” Her eyes flash. “That doesn’t make it okay.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“No, you just say things like they’re facts and that should be enough.”
Usually it is. With her, it never seems to be.
I look at the sea instead of her because she’s too easy to watch when she’s angry. “What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.” She pulls the blanket tighter around her.
“That’s the problem. I don’t know anything.
I don’t know where I’m supposed to go after this.
I don’t know if I’m safe. I don’t know if I should hate you or thank you or call the police or ask you to never leave the room.
” The last part comes out before she can stop it.
She hears it.
So do I.
The rain fills the silence between us.
Her face colors, even now, even through everything. “Forget I said that.”
“No.”
She looks at me sharply. “No?”
“No.”
“You can’t just refuse to forget something embarrassing.”
“I can.”
“That’s not how conversations work.”
“I never claimed to be good at conversations.”
For a moment, unbelievably, she almost smiles.
It doesn’t last.
Her gaze drops to my hands. “Are you still looking for him?”
“Yes.”
“The mole.”
“Yes.”
“And you still don’t know who it is?”
“No.”
She breathes out slowly. “So this isn’t over.”
“No.”
Her eyes close. The wind moves a strand of hair across her cheek. She doesn’t push it away. “What am I going to do?” she says.
Money is the simple part. A job. An apartment. Protection. I can fix all of that with one phone call. I could buy the building she lives in before midnight and make rent stop being a word in her life.
But giving her those things would not solve the problem sitting in her chest.
It would only make her feel owned.
“You will eat dinner first,” I say.
She opens her eyes. “That’s your solution?”
“That’s the first step.”
“I lost my job.”
“You still need to eat.”
“I can’t afford my apartment.”
“You still need to eat.”
“I may be on some mafia kill list.”
“Then you especially need to eat.”
She stares at me.
Then, to my surprise, she laughs. It’s small and tired, but real. It slips out of her like something she didn’t think she still had.
I look at her mouth before I can stop myself.
She sees.
The laugh dies, but not in fear. Something else moves into the quiet.
I should stand.
She has been drinking. Not enough to make her careless, but enough that I need to be careful for both of us. She’s frightened, displaced, grieving the loss of a life that was ordinary and hers. None of this is the right place for want.
And yet she’s looking at me like she wants something simple enough to understand.
“Zoya,” I say. My voice comes out rougher than I intend.
She hears that too.
“You keep saying my name like a warning,” she says.
“It is one.”
“For me or for you?”
I don’t answer.
She moves first.
Not far. She just leans across the space between our chairs, close enough that I can smell wine on her breath and rain in her hair, close enough that I see the pulse beating fast at the base of her throat.
“I’m not drunk,” she says.
“I know.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“And I’m angry at you.”
“I know that too.”
Her eyes search mine. “But I still want you to kiss me, and I don’t know what that says about me.”
“It says you’ve had a bad week.”
“That’s a terrible answer.”
“It’s the honest one.”
She looks away, hurt flashing across her face.
I catch her chin before she can retreat fully, gentle enough that she can pull back if she wants to. “I want to kiss you,” I say.
Her eyes return to mine. The truth does more to her than charm would have. Her breath changes.
“But not because you’re sad,” I continue. “Not because you lost something today. Not because you need to forget where you are.”
Her lashes lower. “What if I need to feel like I’m still a person?”
That gets under my ribs in a way I do not like.
She’s not trying to seduce me. She’s sitting in my coat, in my house, with her life broken open around her, asking for one thing that belongs to her body and not to fear.
I slide my hand from her chin to the side of her neck. Her skin is warm under my palm.
“You tell me to stop,” I say, “and I stop.”
She nods once.
“No.” I hold her gaze. “Say it.”
“If I tell you to stop, you stop.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes close for half a second. When they open, they’re darker. “Then kiss me.”
I do.
Carefully at first. That lasts perhaps three seconds.
She makes a sound into my mouth, small and shaken, and her hand grips the front of my shirt. Whatever restraint I have prepared for disappears under the feel of her. She’s soft against me, warm and alive and trembling in a way that has nothing to do with fear now.
I stand and pull her up with me without breaking the kiss.
She comes willingly, one hand still twisted in my shirt, the other sliding under my jacket as if she needs to know I’m real. Her mouth is inexperienced at first, then hungry, learning quickly, answering me with a need that goes straight to my blood.
I back her against the balcony door.
Her breath catches. My hand goes to her waist, and for one second all I can think is that she fits there too well. Soft under my fingers. Curves filling my palm. She gasps when my thumb brushes the side of her breast through the cardigan, and the sound almost finishes me.
“Ruslan,” she whispers.
I stop. It costs me more than it should.
She looks dazed, lips parted, cheeks flushed, eyes wide like she didn’t expect me to actually stop. “What?” she asks.
“You’ve been drinking.”
Her expression shifts into frustration so fast I almost smile.
“Two glasses.”
“Still.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you stopping?”
“Because I need you to be certain tomorrow too.”
For a second, she just stares at me. Then her face changes. Not soft exactly. Not grateful. Something more complicated. “I’ll be certain tomorrow,” she says.
“Good.”
She swallows. “But I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
That’s a different request. One I can answer.
I brush my thumb over her cheek. “You won’t be.”
She searches my face, suspicious again. “That doesn’t mean—”
“I know what it means.”
“And?”
“And you can sleep in my room. Or I can sit outside your door. Your choice.”
Her eyes flick to my mouth.
The air gets heavy again.
“Your room,” she says.
I nod once.
She reaches for her phone and blanket with hands that are not quite steady. I take the wineglass from the table and set it farther away before she can grab that too.
I lead her inside, down the hall, past the men who know better than to look directly at us. My hand stays at the small of her back, light enough that she could step away.
She does not.
At my bedroom door, she stops. The room beyond is dark except for the low lamp near the bed and the gray reflection of the sea in the windows. I feel her hesitate beside me.
“We don’t have to,” I say.
“I know.”
She steps inside anyway.
I close the door behind us.