29. Cara
CARA
When I make it back to the north wing, morning has already reached the estate.
My slippers brush over the runner. Dmitri has gone back into the hunt. Oleg is being watched. Patrick is still alive somewhere because dead men can’t bargain, and that thought follows me all the way down the corridor.
I want a couple of hours. Breakfast, a shower, and time with Mikhail in the nursery. Maybe a normal conversation with Kathryn that doesn’t involve guns, fake charities, or my brother turning survival into a career. Instead, I find Kathryn in the living room with a packed bag at her feet.
For a second, my brain refuses to read it correctly.
She stands near the low table, one hand gripping the strap of her handbag, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, her face pale and set. Mikhail’s toy cars are lined on the rug behind her. The red one is missing. Mikhail gave it to Dmitri because it wins.
“What is that?” I ask, stopping near the archway.
Kathryn looks at the bag, then back at me. “My bag.”
My throat tightens. “I can see that.”
She folds both arms across her chest. “I’m going home.”
I have no words left for her. Some selfish part of me thought she would stay because I needed her. Because Mikhail needed her. Moscow was impossible, and Kathryn had always been the person who could make impossible days feel like bad errands.
“You can’t,” I say before I think better of it.
Kathryn’s eyebrows lift. “Excuse me?”
I reach for the back of a chair, then let go. “That came out wrong.”
“No,” Kathryn says, stepping around the bag. “That came out honest.”
I rub both hands over my face. “Evan is connected to dangerous people now.”
Kathryn laughs once, short and wrong. “Yes, Cara. I got that part when armed strangers came to my apartment and I had to fly across the world with a four-year-old and a lunchbox code.”
“Kathryn,” I say, moving closer.
She steps back. That hurts more than anything.
“I have a life,” Kathryn says, pointing toward the window as if Boston sits on the other side of the glass. “I have an apartment. A preschool job. Parents who think I’m on some emergency trip. I need to pay bills, Cara.”
Her eyes are red from crying, and guilt stings through my chest. I didn’t notice my best friend falling apart after she got here. While she answered my kid’s questions about why dinosaurs have tiny arms, I sat there picking through my own life.
“I also have an ex-boyfriend who helped your brother reach my best friend’s child,” she mutters.
My chest caves in around the words.
Kathryn’s voice shakes, but she keeps going. “Evan can’t blow up my life from a safe distance while I hide in Moscow and wait for Russian men to fix it.”
“They’re not just Russian men,” I say, then hate myself for how weak that sounds.
Kathryn’s eyes narrow. “That’s your defense?”
“No,” I say, swallowing hard. “I don’t have one.”
“Good,” she says, gripping the strap again. “Because I want answers from my own life. I want to know what Evan said. Who he talked to. What Patrick asked him. How many normal evenings in my kitchen turned into pieces of some trap I never saw.”
I look toward the nursery door.
Mikhail sleeps beyond it, safe for this minute, and even then, everything feels cracked.
Kathryn still isn’t accusing me outright of dragging her into this, or stealing her life, or making her part of a plan she never agreed to join.
I kept most of my secrets sealed away, and now I have to answer for them.
“I was trying to protect you,” I say.
Kathryn’s face changes, and the hurt shows through the anger. “You made me Mikhail’s emergency plan without telling me what emergency I was standing inside.”
My eyes burn.
She points at me with one trembling hand. “You kept Dmitri from me. The Blacklist. Mikhail’s father. Patrick’s reach. Half the danger. I understand why you panicked, Cara, but understanding doesn’t make it hurt less.”
“I didn’t trust anyone with the full truth,” I say, and the words scrape out. “Because the full truth made him easier to use.”
“Him?” Kathryn’s mouth trembles. “Do you mean Patrick?”
“No,” I whisper, looking toward the nursery door. “Mikhail.”
Kathryn’s face crumples for half a second before she pulls it back together. “And I was already being used.”
Silence drops between us. No guard steps in. The maids stay away. Nothing gives us a reason to look anywhere else.
Then a small voice comes from the nursery doorway.
“Is Auntie K angry?”
Both of us stop.
Mikhail stands there in pajama pants and a sweater, hair wild from sleep. His eyes move from my face to Kathryn’s bag.
Kathryn drops to a crouch so fast her knees must hate her. “Hey, buddy,” she says, opening her arms a little but not grabbing him. “I’m angry at grown-up things. I’m not mad at you.”
Mikhail looks at the bag. “Are you going back to my school?”
Kathryn’s face falls apart before she can catch it. I see the exact second leaving gets harder. Her hand reaches out, and Mikhail walks into her arms. Kathryn hugs him with her eyes squeezed shut.
“Not today,” she says into his hair. “I’m not going today.”
Mikhail leans back and studies her. “Tomorrow?”
Kathryn wipes her cheek with her sleeve. “We’ll talk about it. No sneaking. No disappearing. Promise.”
Mikhail nods like he has accepted a treaty, then cups her face with both hands. “You can have a kiss so you don’t feel bad.”
Kathryn makes a sound that breaks halfway through.
He presses a soft kiss to her cheek, then wipes the wet spot with his sleeve because he has no idea adults call that kind of thing precious.
“There,” he says. “All fixed.”
Kathryn looks over his head at me. A laugh breaks out of me, small and wrecked. For a moment, Kathryn stays crouched with her hands on her knees, breathing through whatever she almost did. When she stands, her anger has changed shape.
“I’m still going back,” she says, keeping her voice low.
I nod. “I know.”
“Not today,” Kathryn says, lifting one finger. “Not with a dramatic bag and a speech. When I leave, it’ll be planned, guarded, and useful.”
“Useful how?” I ask, wiping under one eye.
Kathryn looks toward Mikhail. “Evan still has loose threads Patrick may have missed. I know his life. His friends, password habits, and dumb little lies. If Boston has answers, I can help from there.”
Fear crawls up my spine. “Kathryn.”
She shakes her head. “Don’t do that. Don’t make my choices smaller because you’re scared.”
I close my mouth.
Kathryn studies me for a long second. “And you need to hear something else.”
I brace.
Her gaze softens, but her voice stays firm. “You love Dmitri.”
My breath leaves me.
Across the rug, Mikhail makes engine noises and sends the blue car into disaster.
“I hate how complicated that makes everything,” I say, barely above a whisper.
Kathryn reaches for my hand and squeezes once. “Loving him isn’t the problem.”
I look at her.
She squeezes harder. “Forgetting yourself inside him would be.”
Last night, for a few burning hours, I did forget myself. My anger, my borders. The woman who survived without Dmitri because she had no choice.
Kathryn releases my hand and bends for the bag. My stomach twists. She unzips it, pulls out one shirt, and folds it over the chair.
“I’m staying for Mikhail first,” she says, looking at me.
I stand in the archway and watch her unpack one piece of her life, not all of it, and understand that love can stay while trust asks for receipts.