Chapter 29 #2
The word wife softens nothing, and she turns toward me with both arms crossed beneath her breasts, a defensive posture made more distracting by the way it lifts them against the dress.
“I need evidence before I make an accusation,” she says.
“Against Lidia?”
“Against anyone.”
I approach until the cabinet prevents her from retreating farther, then place both hands on its polished edge without touching her. “Bring me whatever you have. We examine it together, and nobody acts before Boris verifies it.”
Katie searches my face for the limit of the promise. I let her look without adding conditions, although the knowledge that someone may have purchased access to her address is already working beneath my skin, calling up the apartment’s broken wall and the marks Sergei left around her throat.
The memory produces the exact response she fears, and my mind moves toward names, rooms without windows, and questions delivered until every answer matches. Restraint remains possible, but I understand why she doubts it when my first instinct still speaks through violence.
The promise costs less than it should; at the warehouse table, I insisted on independent confirmation despite Ivan pressing Katie’s safety into the decision, yet Katie still looks at me as if my restraint could fail between one breath and the next.
“Would Sergei have lived long enough for Boris to question him if I needed a name?” she asks.
“No.” The answer needs no defense. I know what my bullet prevented us from learning.
The answer confirms danger without giving it a shape. I could order Boris to search her phone, follow Cherry, or retrieve the exterior guard’s photographs from the cosmetics warehouse. Those choices would produce information while proving Katie’s fear correct.
“Tell me what you need,” I say.
She looks at my hands braced beside her. “Time.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Neither of us has lied cleanly because she has admitted an accusation exists, while I have offered patience without telling her that contact numbers have been logged since our marriage began. The omission makes my offer thinner than it sounds.
I step away from the cabinet. “The warehouse observation begins tonight. If your evidence touches that operation, time is already moving.”
Katie’s face loses color. “You said reconnaissance.”
“That remains the plan.”
“Keep it that way for twenty-four hours.”
“Give me a reason.”
Her mouth opens before closing again.
I leave without forcing the answer, though every instinct objects to placing distance between my wife and a danger she refuses to name.
At the safe house that evening, Katie sits cross-legged on the bed with a prenatal booklet open across her lap. The domestic picture should ease me, but she has read the same paragraph for ten minutes while her phone rests facedown beside her.
Dinner waits untouched on the tray beside her even though the cook prepared potatoes with lemon after Katie said meat tasted metallic; the scent now makes her press two fingers beneath her nose. I move the tray into the hall without asking, then return with crackers and cold ginger water.
She accepts both with a quiet thank-you that sounds more distant than anger. I sit beside her, close enough that our thighs touch while she eats half a cracker, and the contact carries the strained intimacy of two people sharing a bed while guarding separate doors.
“Did the doctor call?” I ask.
“The specialist appointment is in four days. Boris already approved the building, the elevator, and probably the potted plants.”
“The plants have soil.”
“A known criminal medium.”
Her humor gives me one brief opening, though the phone remains facedown near her knee. When I lift my hand toward her stomach, Katie allows the touch but studies my face as if weighing whether the man who worries about soil can be trusted with an accusation against his uncle.
I remove my shoulder holster, placing it inside the secured drawer. “The observation team confirmed exterior guards carrying Saranov weapons.”
She looks up. “That doesn’t confirm the shipment.”
“No.”
My phone vibrates before I can say more, and Boris reports that a covered convoy has been placed behind the warehouse, with loading crews ordered for departure in three days. Leonid’s manifest remains genuine, and the exterior security matches Ivan’s source.
Three days gives us time for another observation window, followed by a route study before anyone crosses the perimeter. It also gives Pasha time to move weapons toward the house where Katie sleeps.
I call Boris.
“Prepare the forward team for entry before dawn on the third day,” I tell him. “No assault. We cross only to verify the crates.”
Katie closes the prenatal booklet. “Artur.”
I lower the phone, already hearing the warning she refuses to finish.
The plan gives Katie nearly two days, more time than her unanswered suspicion should receive while weapons wait within driving distance of her bed.
I grant it because the reconnaissance can absorb additional verification without surrendering the shipment, although part of me also hopes she will use those hours to choose me before I must decide whether to search for what she hides.
That hope contains its own hypocrisy: the secure phone beside her has logged every contacted number since our marriage, a protection I authorized while she remained a possible plant, then allowed to continue after innocence became clear.
I ask her for trust while withholding the fact that proves how little I offered at the beginning.
She takes her phone into the bathroom, but the door remains open enough for Cherry’s name to reach me before Katie lowers her voice.
“The second meeting has to happen before Artur reaches the warehouse,” she says.