Silence. Then, from the dark, a laugh. Genuine. Warm. The laugh of a man who had been seen and appreciated it.
"You were always the clever one, Mia. I told Alexei that. Well. I told you that, in your clinic, and you wrote it on a form andfiled it, and isn't that wonderful? My confession, in triplicate, in a drawer."
Alexei moved.
Not slowly. Not with the lethal economy Mia had always associated with him, the speed that made speed irrelevant. This was different. This was fast. Explosive. The weapon in his hand, his body uncoiling toward the doorway, and there was a sound, hard and physical, the impact of two bodies colliding, and Mia was thrown backward by the force of Alexei launching forward, and her back hit the desk and the files scattered and her hands found the edge and she held on.
The fight was sounds. She couldn't see it. Grunts, impacts, the crash of a body hitting a wall. The table in the main room overturning. Glass breaking. Alexei's breathing, harsh and controlled. Another sound she couldn't identify, wet and sharp.
He was faster than expected. Stronger. The hero fought with the economy of a man who had been trained by violence, not for it, and every strike was aimed at ending the encounter, not prolonging it. Disappointing, in a way. Morgan preferred opponents who savored the process.
But then, Alexei Almazov had never been interested in process. He was a man of conclusions.
Mia pushed off the desk. Her hands were shaking and her vision was useless and the sounds from the main room were the sounds of two men trying to end each other, and she was not going to stand in a dark study and wait.
She moved toward the sounds. Her bare feet on the cold floor, her hands out in front of her, navigating by touch and terror. Thedoorframe. The main room. Her shin hit the overturned table and pain shot up her leg and she swallowed the cry and kept moving.
A grunt. Alexei's voice, strained, the sound of a man exerting force. And then a different sound. A gasp that wasn't Alexei's. The specific, expelled-air sound of a man whose body had just received something it couldn't absorb.
"Mia, get back—"
She didn't get back. Her hand found the fireplace. The embers were still warm in the grate, and beside the grate was the iron poker, and her fingers closed around it with the grip of a woman who had never held a weapon in her life and was holding one now because the alternative was standing in the dark while the man she loved fought alone.
Ah. The girl had a poker. That was unexpected. That was, in fact, the first unexpected thing that had happened all evening, and Morgan felt a pulse of genuine appreciation. Not for the threat — the poker was irrelevant against a man of his capabilities — but for the courage. The girl was afraid and armed and moving toward the fight instead of away from it, and there was something almost sacred about that kind of stupidity.
She swung.
Not with technique. Not with aim. She swung at the sound that wasn't Alexei, at the space in the dark where the breathing was wrong, and the poker connected with something solid and the impact traveled up her arms and into her shoulders and the sound Morgan made was surprise. Not pain. Surprise. The sound of a man whose game had just been altered by a variable he hadn't adequately accounted for.
It was enough.
One second. The second between Morgan's surprise and Morgan's recovery. That was all Alexei needed.
The sound that followed was final. Not drawn out. Not dramatic. A single, concentrated impact, and then a weight hitting the floor, and then silence.
Real silence. Not the manufactured silence from before. The silence of a room where the threat had been removed and the air was slowly remembering how to carry sound again.
She heard Alexei move. Not toward her. Away. Toward the weight on the floor. A pause. The sound of fingers on a throat, checking for the thing that wouldn't be there. Then his breath releasing, slow, controlled, final. The breath of a man confirming what his hands already knew.
"Mia." Alexei's voice. Wrecked. Ragged. Coming from the dark, from the floor, from somewhere near where the weight had fallen. "Mia, where are you?"
"I'm here." Her voice was trembling. The poker was still in her hand. Her arms were shaking so hard the iron was rattling against the stone of the hearth. "I'm right here."
"Are you hurt?"
"No. Are you—"
"Come here."
Two words. The same two words. The ones he'd spoken in the kitchen when the domesticity had cracked him open. The ones he'd spoken on their wedding night when the pins fell from herhair. Come here. Always come here. The two words that meant: I need you closer than you are.
She dropped the poker. It hit the stone with a clang that filled the cabin. She moved toward his voice, hands out, and her fingers found his chest, and he was on the floor, sitting against the wall, and his shirt was wet in places she didn't want to think about, and his hand found her face in the dark.
Both palms. Thumbs on her cheekbones. The same way he'd held her on the counter. The same way he'd held her at the wedding. The same way he always held her, as if her face were the only compass he had and he needed to know which direction was north.
"You hit him with a poker," he said.
"I did."
