For one second, I already know.
I open it.
A photo fills the screen.
At first, I don’t understand what I’m looking at.
A warehouse. Gray light. A man’s hand at the back of a woman’s head. A kiss.
I blink, and the faces come into focus. It’s Anya… and Dmitri.
The world drops out from under my feet.
My body goes still.
Not because I’m calm. Because something inside me has gone so violent it has no room to move.
Viktor takes one step closer. “Yaromir?”
I don’t answer.
I stare at the image. Dmitri’s hand is in her hair. Her face is partly hidden by the angle. His body blocks most of hers. The picture is close enough to look intimate, far enough to hide force.
Then I see her hand.
It’s raised against his chest. Pushing, perhaps. Touching, perhaps. I can’t tell.
But I see the ring. Her wedding ring.
My ring on her finger while Dmitri’s mouth is on hers.
The room turns red at the edges. A real wash of heat behind my eyes, a brutal narrowing of the world until there’s only that image and the sound of my own breathing.
She ran to him?
The thought is so ugly I almost reject it immediately.
Almost.
Then the jealousy comes. Not clean. Not rational. Not worthy of the control I have spent my life building. It comes like a blade under the ribs.
“No,” Viktor says.
I look at him. He has seen the photo. He’s reading my face now, and for once, he ignores the danger of speaking.
“No,” he repeats. “Look at her hand.”
“I’m looking.”
“She’s pushing him.”
“Is she?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
Viktor holds my gaze. “Yes.”
I look back at the picture. I don’t see what he does. But maybe I’m not looking at it objectively.
I forward the image to Viktor. “Trace it.”
