Then I let her go before I can say anything softer or more dangerous than that, and walk toward the waiting cars with myfather’s address in my pocket and the old, poisonous certainty moving through me that whatever happens next, it was always going to end this way.
32
KATERINA
Waiting isits own kind of torture.
At first I tell myself I can do it. I can sit still. I can stay where Roman left me, in the safe apartment with the curtains half-drawn and the lights too low and the clock on the wall moving so slowly it feels obscene. I can trust that he knows what he’s doing. I can trust Mikhail’s people, the cars, the phones, the men moving in and out of rooms with clipped voices and hard faces.
I can trust Roman. That part, at least, is not difficult anymore.
I love him.
The truth arrives quietly, almost insultingly so, after everything else it has taken to get here.
It comes now, while I’m sitting on the edge of a sofa twisting my own fingers together and thinking about my children and the man who went after them.
I love him.
I love him enough that the thought of him walking into danger without me hurts in a place deeper than fear. I love him enoughthat I understand, finally, why all these years I could never really build a life over the hole he left. I only covered it. I only kept moving and hoped no one would make me stand still long enough to notice.
Hours pass.
At least I think they do. Time has gone strange. Sometimes the clock seems not to move at all. Then I look up again and another forty minutes have gone by. Mikhail takes two calls in the kitchen, both too low for me to hear, and says nothing useful after either of them. One of Roman’s men brings coffee I don’t touch. Another asks if I want food. I look at him until he leaves.
Finally, I stand.
I cannot do this anymore.
I walk into the bedroom because I know where Roman keeps things, or enough of them. The apartment is too carefully arranged for panic, but not too careful for use. I open the drawer in the bedside table and find what I hoped I would not find and am relieved to see anyway.
A gun. Cold, black, heavier than it looks.
I stare at it for one second, then pick it up. I’m halfway to the front door when Mikhail steps into the hall.
He looks at the gun first. Then at me. “No.”
I keep walking.
He moves in front of me. Not threatening. Just absolutely in the way. “I had clear orders,” he says.
I laugh once. It comes out thin. “And I’m supposed to care?”
“Yes.”
“Move.”
He doesn’t. “Katerina.”
“No.”
The word surprises both of us with how sharp it is.
I grip the gun harder, hating that my hand is shaking. “It’s been too long.”
“That doesn’t mean?—”
“It means something.” My voice breaks, and I hate that too, but I keep going because I’m too frightened now to be embarrassed. “You know it means something. If it had gone right, we would have heard by now.”
