I can’t smell any smoke. Just soap and lavender, drifting in from the plantings surrounding the house. Lev must have showered after I went to bed.
“‘Die Fledermaus Overture’ was my favorite.”
My eyes fly open, the tempo in my chest stuttering like a faulty metronome.
I love him.
The truth sneaks in, unbidden and unwelcome and so solid that I can taste the three words on my tongue.
I knew I did. I mean, I worried I did. I clung to denial like a necessary companion because that allowed me to pretend my feet were on firm ground rather than floating in the deep end. Because I knew, once I accepted it to any extent, that it would be that much more difficult to ever let him go. Now he’s right next to me and so far away that it aches.
“It’s mine too,” I admit quietly.
The first domino has been toppled. It feels inevitable that the aftermath will be miserable.
“I could tell. You looked … happy.”
My eyes are stinging again—from salt instead of chemicals. The night he attended was my best performance all season, fueled by not only heartbreak and confusion, but also the fervor his presence had always inspired in me.
The stranger who taught me how to swim minutes after nearly drowning.
I’m not Carina Carson around Lev, not even when I pretended to be. I’m someone bolder, stronger, maybe the woman I would have become if that bullet had missed my mother.
But it didn’t. It hit the intended target, determining the course of my life before I took a first breath. Turning me into someone that things happenedto.
“I wasn’t,” I say sharply.
Part of the anger is aimed at him; part lands as collateral meant for a different target. One who has always been impervious to my resentment.
He stays silent after that comment.
Minutes or hours later, I fall back asleep.
TWELVE YEARS
My phone begins buzzing on the table. Rather than silence it again, I shut the device off entirely.
I haven’t decided what I’ll tell Igor. Haven’t decided what I’ll tell Carina. I was preoccupied by disarming the immediate threat of the Italians finding her first, and now … what?
If I deliver her as requested, Igor will broker a deal. She’ll be sent back to the family she ran from. We’ll receive some benefit. Something useful, but nothing important.
Why did she leave Chicago?
Why did she run to Paris?
Why did she never tell me who she was?
That last question I at least have a guess at the answer—she wasn’t sure how I’d react. She was smart enough—and I was careless enough—to make an accurate guess at what I was involved in. To know it was similar and in conflict with her family’s dealings.
I understand why she didn’t lead with the truth. Not in that pool and not at the party I’d arranged for the sole purpose of seeing her again. Or when I snuck around her university.
But twelve years? Twelve fucking years of deceit?
“Morning.” Carina enters the kitchen with sleepy eyes and tangled hair, wearing only the oversize shirt she slept in.
It shouldn’t be a sexy outfit. I avert my gaze from her long legs, only for it to snag on the outline of her nipples.
This should be an easy situation to separate sex from. I’m here on orders, with a clear objective from mypakhan. Problem is, I associate Carina with sex. Not only when I’m around her, if I’m being entirely honest.
