"I don't belong to anyone," I said.
"No," he agreed. "But you belong with me. There's a difference."
His thumb traced my cheekbone. Once. Twice. A whisper of touch that sent shivers down my spine.
"Tonight, you did something remarkable," he said. "You kept your head when everyone else lost theirs. You saved a man's life while bullets were flying. You didn't flinch." He paused. "I've known men who've been in this life for decades who couldn't do what you did tonight."
"I told you. I grew up on a farm."
"Farm girls don't apply tourniquets under fire."
"Maybe this one does."
He smiled. It was a small smile, barely a curve of his lips, but it reached his eyes. The first time I'd seen that—the first time his smile looked like something other than a crack in a stone wall.
"Maybe this one does," he repeated.
He dropped his hand. The warmth of his palm lingered on my cheek, and I pressed my fingers to the spot, trying to hold onto it.
"We should get you home," he said. "You need to clean up. Change your clothes." He glanced down at my jeans, dark with Mikhail's blood. "Those are ruined."
"Blood washes out."
"Not all of it."
He opened the door and stepped out. I watched him walk around the car, his figure silhouetted against the headlights, and I thought about what he'd said.
For me.
Not for the money. Not for the family. For him.
I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know what it would cost me.
But I knew, with a certainty that sat in my bones like a fever, that I wasn't going to walk away.
Viktor drove me home in silence.
The city was waking up—the first hints of grey light in the sky, the first cars on the road, the first sounds of a new day. I watched the familiar streets pass by, the diner where I'd first met Aleksander, the corner where I bought groceries, the stoop where I sometimes sat when I couldn't sleep.
My apartment building looked smaller than I remembered. Less like a home and more like a way station. A place I passed through on my way to somewhere else.
I got out of the car. My legs were stiff, my jeans stiff with dried blood, my hands stiff with the memory of pressure and gauze and the feel of a tourniquet tightening.
"Monika."
I turned. Viktor was standing by the car, holding something out. A towel. Clean, white, folded into a neat square.
"For your hands," he said.
I took it. Our fingers brushed, and I saw something in his old eyes—something that looked like respect.
"You did good tonight," he said.
"Thank you."
"The old man—" He stopped. Corrected himself. "Aleksander. He doesn't say things he doesn't mean. When he said you were his... he meant it."
"I know."
