"I want to know what was in that box, Nadia. And I want to know now."
Her face does not change.
The leather jacket is on the back of a chair. Her hair is loose. There is a Chemex on the counter. She is barefoot.
Her eyes cut to the door behind me. "How did you find me?"
"I followed you from the bank."
She closes her eyes for one second. When she opens them, her face is doing what her face does. Nothing.
"What was in the box?"
"Sean. I am going to ask you to leave."
"That is not on the table."
"It is on the table."
"It is not."
She does not move from the counter.
I come the rest of the way to her. I put my hand on the counter beside her hip. Not touching. Close enough that her body knows the geometry before her face does.
Her breath changes.
I hear it. She hears me hear it.
"Nadia."
"Don't."
"What was in the box?"
"I cannot tell you."
"Cannot?"
"Will not."
"Which is it?"
"Both. You are a cop. You are a man with a wound in his side. You are a man whose adoptive father took money from a Greek whom the Morettis are at war with. You have already burned half your life down for me. I am not going to be the one who hands you the match for the other half."
The air leaves the kitchen.
She has, in five sentences, named the war. The cop. The wound. What we have been to each other since the warehouse.
She has also told me, without saying it, that what is in the box has a Greek in it.
Fuck.
"Then I am going to find it myself."
"You are not. I have already moved it."
She wants me to choose, right now, in her kitchen, whether I am here for the document or for her.
