“No.” He shakes his head hard. “No, not like that. I didn’t mean to.”
“There is no accidental way to shoot a woman.”
“She grabbed my arm,” he says, desperate now. “I was angry. Anya had run, and Katya came out of nowhere, screaming at me, asking what I’d done. I told her to move. She wouldn’t. She kept saying she would tell everyone. She reached for the gun, and it went off.” He swallows, eyes fixed on mine. “She fell so quickly I didn’t even understand at first.”
I see it then, not because I pity him, but because guilt has finally made him sloppy. The confession is ugly, frightened, and real.
But it doesn’t matter to me, none of it does. He has to die.
I lift the gun.
He flinches so hard his head hits the wall. “Please,” he whispers. “Yaromir, please. I’m your brother.”
“No,” I say. “You were my father’s son.”
My finger settles on the trigger.
Then I hear it.
“Yaromir.”
A voice behind me. Hoarse. Soft.
Impossible.
My body goes still.
For a moment, I think the sound has come from inside my own head. Some last mercy from a mind that has finally taken too much.
Then she says it again.
“Yaromir.”
I turn.
At the end of the corridor, leaning heavily against Viktor, pale beneath the ruined lights, stands Anya.
35
ANYA
For one moment,nobody moves.
Yaromir stands in the corridor with his gun raised, his shirt torn at the side, blood darkening the fabric near his ribs. Dmitri is on the floor against the wall, pale and shaking, one hand pressed to his wounded arm.
And Yaromir is looking at me as if I’m not real.
As if grief has finally become cruel enough to give him my face.
I take one step forward and nearly fall.
Viktor catches me immediately. “Careful.”
Yaromir hears his voice, sees Viktor’s hand at my waist, sees the hospital coat around my shoulders, the bandage visible where the fabric shifts.
Then his face changes. The cold, murderous stillness breaks.
“Anya.” My name leaves him like it hurts.
