The gun was in my hand, and my knuckles were white, and I couldn't feel my fingers. Nobody talked to me like this. Nobody in my life had ever sat across a table from me and said the thing I couldn't say and lived through it.
"I can fix the jacket," he said. "I cannae fix what happened to him. But I can make it so the thing doesnae fall apart in yer hands."
The kid was looking at me like he'd been alive a lot longer than twenty-two years, and my chest was so tight I couldn't pull a full breath.
"You'll stay here," I said. I barely recognized the sound of it. "In this apartment. Under my watch. You'll work on the jacket and you'll give me everything you know about the Italian operation. When the jacket is done and the intel checks out, we'll talk about what happens next."
"And if the jacket isnae done to yer satisfaction?"
I set the gun on the table. "Then you and I have a problem."
"Ye're a real charmer, ye know that?" He pulled the jacket back into his lap and held it there, both hands flat on the leather, the cuffs catching the light. "I'll need a list of materials. And insulin. And food that isnae shite. And somewhere to sleep that isnae a chair."
"You'll get what you need."
"And the cuffs?"
"Stay on."
He looked down at the jacket in his lap. His thumb moved over the bullet hole, one slow pass, the same way he'd traced the seam on my glove, and I stood up before I knew I was moving.
"Yer da had good taste," he said quietly. "Whoever made this loved him."
I opened the front door. Gregori was in the hallway, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, exactly where I knew he'd be. "He's staying here."
Gregori stared at me. "Here?"
"In this apartment. Set up the spare room. Get Collins over in the morning with a full medical kit and a month's supply of insulin. And I need someone to source leather-working tools. Good ones. I'll have a list."
"Boss, you want a prisoner living in your apartment?"
"I want an asset under my direct supervision. Is that a problem?"
"It's a problem if the Italians find out where you live."
"The Italians think he's dead. That's why they left him in a warehouse."
Gregori pushed off the wall. He looked past me into the apartment where the kid was sitting at my table with a dead man's jacket in his lap. "Nikita's going to have questions."
"Nikita can call me." I stepped closer to Gregori. "This isn't a discussion. Get it done."
He went. I stood in the hallway and pressed two fingers to my forehead. From inside the apartment, I could hear the cuffs clink as the kid shifted in the chair. He was still studying the jacket.
I was bringing him into my home. Into the only space in the world that was mine. I was going to sleep down the hall from him every night until the jacket was done, and I had just bullied two grown men into making it happen at two in the morning because I was definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent in control of this situation.
You're a fucking idiot, Aleksi.
I walked back inside and closed the door behind me.
I woke up tothe smell of butter and dill and onion softening in a pan.
My stomach clenched so hard that my eyes watered. I lifted my head from the pillow and inhaled. Someone was cooking real food in the next room, and I'd have sold a kidney for a bite.
The door opened. Aleksi stood in the frame, already dressed, suit and gloves, the whole armor of him in place. He'd changed since last night into a charcoal suit wool that needed the shoulders taken out. Same cold, blue eyes. He looked like he'd slept about as well as I had.
"Get up," he said, and crossed the room to unlock the cuff.
I rubbed my wrist where the steel had bitten in and took in the spare room for the first time in daylight. Small, clean, everything expensive and none of it personal. Solid wood nightstand, dovetail joints, no veneer. Brushed nickel lamp with a linen shade, the kind of thing an interior designer picks when nobody's told them what the client likes. Everything matched.Nothing meant anything. My da's shop had a back room half this size with more life in it.
