5. The Stitch #2
Dmitri's mouth twitches again—that almost-smile—and I see something in his eyes that looks like gratitude. He stands up, holding the towel against his arm, and Aleksander puts a hand on his shoulder.
"Go to the house," Aleksander says. "Viktor will meet you there. Tell him I want a full accounting of everyone who knew your route tonight."
"Yes, sir."
Dmitri leaves. The door chimes behind him, and then it's just the two of us. Me and the suit. Me and the man who won't tell me his name, who comes to my diner every night, who watches me like I'm something he's trying to understand.
"You should have called me," he says.
I start cleaning up. The needle goes into the sharps container—an old coffee can I labeled with a Sharpie—and the fishing line goes into the trash. The vodka bottle is half-empty now. I'll have to replace it before Del notices.
"Why?" I ask. "I don't even know your name."
He's quiet for a long moment. I wipe down the counter, scrubbing at the spots where blood has already started to dry, and I don't look at him. I'm afraid of what I'll see if I look at him.
"Aleksander," he says.
I stop scrubbing.
"My name is Aleksander."
The word hangs in the air between us, heavy and light at the same time. A name. Finally. After weeks of silence, weeks of evasion, weeks of watching him walk in and out of my life without giving me anything to hold onto.
"Aleksander," I repeat. Testing it. The way he tested my name, that first night. The way he said Monika like he was tasting something sweet.
"Aleksander Mire."
The last name lands differently. Heavier. Like he's giving me something he doesn't give anyone. Like he's handing me a key to a door I'm not sure I want to open.
I don't recognize the name. I should. Maybe I will, someday. But right now, it's just a word—a collection of sounds that mean nothing to me except that he chose to say them.
"Mire," I say. "Is that supposed to mean something?"
He doesn't answer. He moves closer—not touching, not yet, but close enough that I can feel the warmth of him, the solid presence of him, the way his body blocks out the light from the sign outside. He reaches out, slow and deliberate, and takes my hand.
My right hand. The one I use for stitches, for needles, for the small, precise movements that require steadiness. He turns it over, palm up, and looks at it like he's reading a map.
"These hands shouldn't be wasting time in a diner."
My throat is dry. "What should they be doing?"
"Saving lives."
I should pull away. I should laugh, make a joke, pretend that his touch doesn't feel like something I've been waiting for without knowing I was waiting. But I don't. I stand there with my hand in his and my heart in my throat and I let him look at me the way he's been looking at me for weeks.
"You're better than anyone I could hire," he says. "I've seen you work. Twice now. You don't flinch. You don't hesitate. You just... do what needs to be done."
"That's called survival."
"It's called talent. And I have a use for it."
I finally pull my hand back. Not because I want to. Because I need to think, and I can't think when he's touching me.
"What kind of use?"
"My family has needs. People get hurt. I have doctors on retainer, but they're not always...
available. And they're not you." He pauses.
"I want you to work for me. Medical attendant.
On call. I'll pay you more than you make in a month at this place.
I'll give you a room, if you want it. Protection. Whatever you need."
"A room?"
"The mansion has empty rooms. You'd have your own space. Privacy. Safety."
I stare at him. "You want me to live with you?"
"I want you to be safe." He says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
"That man tonight—Dmitri—he came here because people know about you now.
Word spreads. A girl who can stitch a wound, who doesn't ask questions, who works alone in a diner at two in the morning?
That's a resource. And resources get used.
Sometimes by people who aren't as gentle as I am. "
"Are you gentle?"
The question comes out before I can stop it. I watch his face change—just slightly, just enough—and I see something there that I don't recognize. Something that looks like hunger, carefully controlled. Something that looks like want.
"I can be," he says. "When it matters."
I don't say yes.
I don't say no.
I say I'll think about it, and he nods like he expected that answer, and then he sits on his usual stool and drinks his usual coffee and eats the last slice of apple pie—the edge piece, the one I saved for him without thinking.
He stays until almost three, and we talk about nothing.
The weather. The city. The way the light looks when it hits the buildings in the morning.
He doesn't touch me again. But I feel his eyes on me the whole time, and I feel the weight of his offer pressing against my chest like something I can't put down.
When he leaves, he presses another stack of hundreds into my palm.
"For Dmitri," he says. "For the stitches."
"Tell him to be more careful."
"I will."
He walks to the door. Pauses. Looks back at me over his shoulder, the way he always does, and I see something in his grey eyes that I haven't seen before.
Something that looks like hope.
"Goodnight, Monika."
The door chimes. The wind blows. And I'm left alone with the smell of coffee and blood and the ghost of his hand in mine.
The apartment is dark when I get home.
I don't turn on the lights. I don't need them. I've walked these rooms a thousand times, in the dark, in the light, in the grey hours between sleep and waking. I know where the floor creaks. I know where the radiator hisses. I know the shape of the silence that lives in the walls.
I sit on the edge of my bed and take off my shoes. One at a time. Slowly. The way you do things when you're trying not to think about anything else.
Aleksander Mire.
I say the name out loud, in the dark. "Aleksander Mire."
It sounds like something. Like a promise. Like a warning. Like the beginning of a story I'm not sure I want to be in.
He wants me to work for him. To live in his mansion. To stitch his people back together when they break.
He wants me to be safe.
And I keep thinking about the way he looked at my hands. The way he held them. The way he said saving lives like he meant something more than the words could hold.
My mother taught me to lean in.
She didn't teach me how to know when leaning in was the wrong thing to do.
I lie down on the bed and close my eyes, and I see his face. Grey eyes. Silver at the temples. A smile that looks like a crack in a stone wall.
I dream about the barn. About my mother. About a calf named Mercy, and the way it felt to pull her into the world.
I dream about hands. My hands. His hands. The space between them, closing like a wound that's finally learning how to heal.
In the morning, I call the number on the card.