8. Dmitri
DMITRI
Itake the north corridor back to Cara.
The guard unlocks her suite at my signal. Cara stands near the entrance in the same travel-rumpled clothes, pale and rigid, with questions burning through her face.
“Why did you come to the hangar yourself?” she asks. She throws the question like a salvo, fast and aimed well, and I feel the hit before I have an answer ready.
I step inside, and the guard shuts the door behind me. “Why does that matter?”
Her mouth curves with no humor. “You’ve answered a question with a question. I thought men with guns were supposed to be more direct.”
“Cara.”
“No, let’s do direct.” She takes one step toward me. The fear is there, but anger is what she lets me see. “Patrick sold me to save himself.”
I say nothing.
Her eyes narrow. “He also sold me because of you.”
My hands stay at my sides.
“Careful.”
“Stop pretending you’re hearing this for the first time.” She points toward the door. “Even your men know it’s personal. You took custody of me yourself.”
I step into her space. “You overheard men talking.”
“Congratulations.” Her eyes flash. “Your haunted murder mansion has acoustics.”
“They shouldn’t have spoken near your door.”
I move past her and dial Abramov.
He answers on the first ring. “Antonov.”
“Change the guards outside her suite.”
A pause. “At morning rotation?”
“Now.”
Cara watches me, arms folded, fury still alive in her face.
I end the call.
“That,” she says, “is what bothers you?”
“It’s one thing that bothers me.” I walk to the table. Mrs. Wentworth has left a few magazines beside the tray. Fine dining. Luxury travel. Estate interiors. Expensive boredom, chosen by someone who thought glossy paper could tire out a furious woman.
Cara hasn’t touched them.
She steps closer. Her voice comes out charged, ready to break either way. “You’re not going to deny it.”
“No.”
She breaks into a laugh with no humor in it. “Fuck. It’s worse than I thought.”
“You’re making more of this than it deserves.” My voice stays even, though keeping it there takes effort. “Patrick may have guessed I’d take personal custody.”
“May have guessed?” She throws a hand toward the door. “You flew across the world, collected me yourself, and parked me in your luxury prison before I even finished panicking.”
“You’re alive.”
“I’m trapped.” Her mouth tightens, and the anger cracks enough to show the exhaustion under it. “Do you seriously not see the difference?”
“I see more than you think.” I put the magazine on the table and turn to face her.
“Then look at the right thing.” She steps closer again, too close for comfort. “Patrick didn’t just sell me. He aimed me.”
Heat moves through me fast enough to become dangerous. I hold her stare because if I look at her mouth, I’ll remember Boston, and if I remember Boston now, I’ll make another mistake.
“Don’t repeat anything you hear through that door,” I say.
“Oh, good.” Her smile turns thin. “The lesson is secrecy. For a second, I thought we were having a human conversation.”
“You’ll get one call each day. Food by request. Movement under escort.” I try to keep control, and the effort irritates me more than it should. “No devices until cleared. If you hear Morozov’s name, Patrick’s name, Blacklist details, route names, or staff names, you keep them to yourself.”
“Because you said so?”
“Because the wrong words here can get someone killed.”
Her eyes flash. “Why are you here this late? To count your prisoner? To make sure I haven’t vanished through the walls? Or are we calling this concern now?”
That one gets through.
I move before my face can answer, crossing to the desk and taking the security phone. “Get some sleep.”
Cara follows me two steps, relentless. “Do you know what I thought when you disappeared?”
My hand stops on the phone.
Her voice changes. It doesn’t soften. “I thought I was an idiot. I thought I fell into bed with a dangerous man who had one great night and walked away because I was disposable. Then my life changed, and I still didn’t reach you.”
Every part of me goes still.
She doesn’t say what changed. I hear the part she leaves out, and I have to stop myself from reaching for it.
“I could’ve reached you through Patrick,” she says. “I chose not to. I wasn’t going to wake up a man who left a woman’s bed and made sure she had nothing to hold.”
I turn back slowly. “You think I left because I was done with you.”
“You left.”
“My reasons don’t change what happened.”
“No, they don’t.” Her voice shakes now, and she looks furious that it does. “So don’t stand here five years later and act offended that I built a life without you.”
I should ask what life.
The question sits there. I should push her, question her, and pull at the loose piece until the truth comes out. Instead, I look at the locked windows, the cleared desk, the guarded door, and the woman Patrick put in my hands because he knew I might want answers more than sense.
“Sleep,” I say again.
“Coward.”
That word gets through.
Two steps, and I’m in front of her. Cara doesn’t move back. Her chin lifts, her eyes stay on mine, and every tired inch of her looks ready to break before she gives me the satisfaction of seeing it.
“You don’t know what you’re calling me,” I say.
“I know exactly what I’m calling you.”
My hand closes around her wrist, then stops there. Moving her aside would be easy. Leaving would be smarter. The locked door could do what locked doors do.
Cara looks down at my hand, then back at me. “Just as I thought.”
“What?”
“Control. Your favorite language.”
I don’t release her. I step closer. Heat moves between us, brutal and familiar, and her breath catches before she can hide it. That small sound does more damage than any insult she’s thrown at me tonight.
Her free hand hits my chest. For one second, I think she means to shove me away.
Then her fingers twist in my shirt, and she drags me down.
The kiss is all teeth and anger at first. Cara kisses as if she wants to punish me with every year I left behind, and I take it.
Some part of me has wanted her anger since the morning I left Boston.
My hand leaves her wrist and comes to her face. I hold her there. She makes a sound against my mouth, half protest, half demand, and the last disciplined part of me fractures. I turn her, backing her into the wall beside the door.
My body covers hers without pinning her, close enough to feel the tremor she hates me for noticing. Cara bites my lower lip.
Boston returns in pieces—her laugh in the elevator, her thighs around my hips, her mouth saying my name before the world caught fire. I tear myself back before memory becomes action.
Cara stays against the wall, breathing hard, eyes bright.
She looks at my mouth. “Still running?”
The question almost brings me back to her.
I walk to the door before I answer with something I can’t take back. “You don’t know what you’re asking me to explain.”
“No,” she says. “I know exactly what I asked. You’re the one running.”
I leave while she is still standing there, and the lock closes between us. Steel is easier to manage than her questions.
My quarters sit at the end of the north wing. The space is plain by Volkov standards. One window faces the inner courtyard, and across it, lights burn in the guest wing where Cara has been placed.
I remove my jacket, then my shoulder holster, and set both on the chair.
My hands move through familiar tasks while my mind returns to Boston against my will.
Patrick had been at the party that night, smiling hard, introducing his sister to men who could buy his life twice over.
He didn’t watch Cara leave. At least, that was what he let me think.
He looked busy, distracted, drunk on attention and proximity to power.
Was he?
I remember his eyes when she laughed with me, the way his smile held after she turned away. I remember my mother’s goodnight text, the choice to delay my flight, and the house in Moscow burning while I stood barefoot in a hotel kitchen with Cara asleep behind me.
A knock comes at my door. No guard announces it, which means one person. I open it, and Maksim walks in without waiting. He wears no coat now, only a dark shirt and trousers, and his face tells me he isn’t here for courtesy.
“Pakhan,” I say.
He moves past me and takes the chair near the desk.
“I don’t have long,” he says. “Elena is awake, and our son has decided night is for political protest.”
I almost smile.
Maksim sees it. “Morozov has always attacked pressure points.”
The smile dies.
“Years ago, he used fire and family,” Maksim says. “He wanted you emotional, fast, and stupid. He wanted you chasing smoke while he watched the routes.”
My hands stay flat on my knees.
For five years, I have followed ash through bank records, dead couriers, burned phones, altered manifests. Every trail ended the same way. A dead man. A missing signature. Another name wiped clean. The answers kept leading to paid silence. The proof always stopped short of Morozov’s hands.
“Patrick delivers Cara into the Blacklist, and Morozov’s channels start moving before she even reaches the estate,” Maksim says. “He’s asking you the same question again.”
“Whether I’ll move angrily,” I say.
Maksim’s eyes hold mine. “Whether you’ll move blindly.”
He gets up from the chair and stands before the window.
Cara’s lights are still on.
Maksim follows my gaze, then returns to me. “A fool would let him try the same door again.”
“Is she important enough to make you lose five years of work?” he asks.
He leaves before I answer, and I remain at the window long after his steps fade.