12. Dmitri
DMITRI
Small, furious, starving, and hunted into a corner, Cara O’Connell finds one reckless spark and aims her mouth at the Pakhan. Every man in the office suddenly remembers he has hands.
Yuri freezes over his keyboard. Petrov stops with one paper half lifted. Leonid’s pen rests against the folder without making another mark. Abramov watches Maksim, since security chiefs survive by reading the man everyone else fears reading wrong.
Maksim gives Cara nothing.
His face stays composed. He says nothing, which makes her words sound even more reckless.
I look at Cara.
She sits in Yuri’s chair with her chin raised and her fingers near the locked Volkov laptop, trying to look difficult enough to survive.
Her color has gone wrong. Her mouth is brave, but her eyes have gone blank in a way I don’t like.
Then she lifts herself from the chair. Her hand finds the table.
Maksim looks at Cara, then at me. That’s all, and I understand it. He has seen the same thing I have.
Her fingers grip the chair. Her focus keeps slipping.
Maksim won’t warn her like a worried man. He gives the problem to me with one glance because in this house, even concern has rank.
I step closer to her chair. “Don’t stand.”
Cara hears the order and does exactly what I expect.
She stands.
“I’m fine,” she says, because women like Cara would argue with a bullet if it came in rudely.
It happens.
Her knees fail. One second, she is upright, and the next, her eyes lose focus. I catch her before her head can hit the floor.
The office breaks into movement around us. Abramov reaches the wall panel and presses the medical call. “Dr. Yelena to command. Now.”
Petrov clears the chair back. Leonid shuts the laptop with one hand and pulls the cords free with the other. Yuri stumbles aside, mumbling in Russian about nerves, shock, getting her head lower, and finding water. That word reaches me clean.
Water.
I lower Cara to the carpet. Her head rests against my forearm for one breath before I lay her flat. Her skin feels cold against my fingers.
“Water,” I snap.
Leonid brings a glass and hands it to me.
Lidiya appears first. Mrs. Wentworth arrives behind her with towels, her glasses swinging from their chain. She takes in Cara, me, Maksim, the open files, and the closed laptop in one sweep.
“She hasn’t eaten properly,” Mrs. Wentworth says.
“I know.”
Her eyes flick to me. She hears the part I didn’t mean to give away. I wet the corner of a towel and press it to Cara’s forehead. My hand shakes once before I make it stop.
Cara’s lashes move.
“Stay down,” I say.
Her eyes open halfway. “Did I die?”
“No.”
“Please tell me I didn’t make eye contact with anyone on the way down,” she mutters.
Her eyes close again.
Maksim stands above us, unreadable and severe. He doesn’t ask useless questions. He looks at Abramov.
“Seal the room.”
Abramov nods.
Maksim’s gaze moves to Leonid. “Secure the archive.”
Leonid gathers the laptop and files.
Only then does Maksim look at Cara. “Doctor first. Everything else after.”
Dr. Yelena enters with a medical bag in hand. “Move back unless you want me treating you next.”
I move only enough to let her work.
Yelena kneels, checks Cara’s pulse, then her pupils. “When did she last eat?”
“Barely this morning,” Mrs. Wentworth answers.
Yelena looks at me. “And she was brought down to work?”
Maksim speaks from near the table. “Is she fit to move?”
“Not yet,” Yelena says. “She stays flat for a few minutes. Water first, then broth or tea with sugar. If she keeps it down, she can sit.”
Cara turns her head a fraction. “Am I inconveniencing everyone?”
“Only inconveniencing me,” Yelena says. “Try not to enjoy it.”
A smile nearly slips out before I remember where I am.
Maksim sees it.
Yelena checks Cara’s blood pressure, pulse, and eyes again, then closes her bag. “Exhaustion, stress, and not enough food. No head injury.” She looks at me. “You did the right thing.” Then she adds, “keep her supervised, keep her fed, and don’t drag her through another interrogation before lunch.”
“When she can sit,” Maksim says, “move her to Elena's Women's Wing.”
Abramov nods. “I’ll post men outside.”
“Review the access logs for everyone in the command wing since dawn,” Maksim adds. “No one leaves until your office clears them.”
Cara’s eyes open again, slower this time. She looks toward him, then me, and she closes her eyes. Her fingers shift against my sleeve. She’s still cold, and pale, fighting to look untouchable from the floor of a house that could swallow her whole. I close my hand over hers before I decide not to.
Lidiya and Mrs. Wentworth take over once Yelena allows Cara to sit.
Cara tries to wave them off, then sways hard enough that my hand moves before hers does. She notices and smiles thinly.
“I’m walking,” she says.
“You’re arguing from the floor,” Yelena answers. “Let the girl help.”
Lidiya slides one arm around Cara’s waist, and I move to Cara’s other side, close enough to catch her if she slips.
We take her to Women’s Wing, away from the screens and files.
Elena built that part of the house after she married Maksim. Guards stay outside, and business stops at the door unless Elena allows it. Just warm rooms, locked doors, clean sheets, and space where women are treated like people instead of problems to solve.
Lidiya guides her onto the green settee near the fireplace. Mrs. Wentworth settles a blanket over Cara’s knees. Lidiya places sweet tea on the small table, then withdraws with one backward glance.
Cara stares at the cup. “Is this medical tea or obedience tea?”
“Drink,” Yelena says.
Cara drinks.
The door opens before anyone knocks.
Elena Volkov steps in. No one announces her. Abramov straightens. Mrs. Wentworth steps aside near the tea table. Even Yelena turns her head.
Her dark hair is pinned back and a pale sweater sits loose at one shoulder. Her wedding ring is visible when she reaches for the doorframe.
Elena looks at Cara first, not at the file in Leonid’s hand, not at me.
“You must be Cara,” she says.
Cara pulls the blanket closer. “I’m starting to think everyone here gets a briefing.”
Elena’s mouth softens. “This house does love paperwork when it doesn’t know what to do with a person.”
Then her gaze moves to me, and I feel the old discipline snap into place.
“This house also likes to call locked doors protection,” Elena says, then looks back at Cara. “Sometimes, it even means it.”
Cara’s eyes fix on Elena. Her mouth moves once, then closes. Instead of arguing, she settles back against the settee and mutters, “Thank you.” The blanket slips looser around her, and her breathing eases. Elena did what none of us managed. She made Cara stop bracing.
I stand beside the settee and understand the warning. Cara is no longer only Patrick’s sister, or a name in a file, or a woman under guard. Elena has decided Cara matters. That changes how every man in this house is allowed to treat her, including me.
Elena looks over the room once, then starts removing people from it.
“Yelena, leave the instructions with Mrs. Wentworth. Lidiya, bring broth and more water, then let her rest. Abramov, post guards outside, not inside. Leonid, take the files back to legal.”
She doesn’t raise her voice, and still, the sitting room empties in clean pieces.
Yelena writes on a small prescription pad and hands the sheet to Mrs. Wentworth. “Sugar in tea today. Broth within the hour. Proper food after that, nothing heavy. I’ll check her again in two days unless she decides to collapse for sport.”
Cara’s mouth twitches. “I’ll check my schedule.”
Yelena gives her a look. “Cancel it.”
Lidiya sets broth, tea, and water on the table before she slips out. Mrs. Wentworth follows with the prescription in hand, already turning instructions into someone else’s problem. Leonid closes the door behind him.
Elena remains beside the fireplace.
Her gaze moves from Cara to me. “Stay with her.”
Cara stiffens against the pillows. “I don’t need a guard dog.”
“No,” Elena says. “You need one face in this house you have seen before today.”
Elena knows enough about Boston, and she doesn’t make me say it. I left Cara after one night, my parents were dead by morning, and Cara woke up alone. After that, I left five years of empty space between us.
Cara looks away.
Elena sees that as well. “Rest, eat, then decide how angry you want to be.”
“I usually multitask,” Cara says.
A faint softness reaches Elena’s mouth. “I noticed.”
She leaves, and the latch clicks into the silence.
Cara sits on the green settee with the blanket over her knees, pale but upright, her dark hair loosening around her face. The sweet tea steams beside her. The broth is untouched. Beyond the rounded window, snow covers the ground, and black trees stand behind the bars.
I stand near the mantel, far from her, because if I get close, I will touch her.
“You heard her,” I say. “Drink.”
Cara lifts the cup, takes one resentful sip, and replaces it on the table. “You turn every basic bodily function into a security protocol.”
“You fainted,” I point out.
“A tactical exit from consciousness.”
“You insulted Maksim first.”
She leans back against the pillows, and the blanket slides lower over her knees. “He needed feedback.”
“He could have killed you for less,” I say.
“And yet here I am, being force-fed tea by committee.”
Color has come back to her face. I’m glad to see it. I pull a chair closer, then stop before I sit beside her. Cara sees me stop.
“What?” she asks. “Afraid I’ll faint on you again and ruin your terrifying control?”
“You worked well.” I look at her hands first. “With Patrick’s archive.”
They’re steady again, the hands of someone who knows what to do with a locked system.
Her expression shifts. “Was that almost a compliment?”
“No.”
“Good.” She tugs the blanket higher, settling deeper into the settee. “I’d hate for the hostage program to get emotionally confusing.”
I look toward the door, then back at her. “You’ll be working beside me.”
Her smile dies. That means more than praise. It puts her inside the work, right at my side, where every man in this house can see her.
“Why?” she asks.
“Because Patrick’s files need you.”
“Patrick’s files.” Her fingers tighten around the blanket. “Patrick keeps coming at me from every side.”
“He came into my life before you did.”
Cara looks up.
I should stop. Elena would tell me to stop, and Maksim would tell me to stay with the facts. I get up from the chair and cross to the mantel. My palm presses against the stone for one second, then I turn back.
Cara says, “Say that again.”
“Patrick was already under Volkov watch when I went to Boston,” I say. “He had touched our money, and one of his contacts led toward Morozov. Maksim sent me to follow the money, confirm the link, and come home.”
Her face changes. “You were there for Patrick.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t come there for me.”
“I didn’t know you existed.”
She pulls the blanket closer around herself.
“I met you at that party,” I say. “I had a flight back to Moscow. I didn’t take it.”
Cara goes still.
“That night, my house burned. My parents were inside.”
Her lips part, and for a second she can’t speak.
“For five years, I hunted the man who ordered it,” I say. “I found names, payments, and routes. Every time I wanted to move, Maksim stopped me.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Because anger isn’t proof.” I sit again because standing over her feels wrong. “He told me to build the case first. Then we would destroy the men behind it.”
Cara doesn’t interrupt me, but her face tightens as I speak. Part of her already knows where this is going, and that part doesn’t want to hear another word.
“I had nothing clean to give you then,” I say. “I was angry. I was empty. I left Boston before I could make another bad choice.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“Then Patrick vanished with Volkov money,” I say. “Your name came up on the Blacklist.”
Her face loses color.
I keep my voice even. “I don’t know what Patrick knew five years ago. I don’t think he knew what Morozov would do that night.”
She stares at me.
“But Patrick’s money, his contacts, and his careless mouth brought me to Boston,” I say. “That part is true.”
Her voice breaks. “He put you there.”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t plan the fire.”
“I don’t think so.”
“But his mess put you in Boston, and then he used me years later.”
I have no answer that will make that cleaner.
Cara covers her face with both hands. I move once, then stop with my hand on my knee. I wait.
After a while, she lowers her hands.
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” she says.
Her eyes move to the barred window. “I don’t know if he keeps making mistakes around us or if he’s been using us all along.”
I have no reply for her, and for once, Cara has no joke ready.
“I don’t know my brother anymore.”