Page 11 of Claimed By the BRATVA Grump

Outside, a car turns onto the block and the headlights sweep across the window. Neither of us moves until it passes. The refrigeration unit hums. Somewhere in the back, one of the cats knocks something off a shelf.

Eduard looks at me, and for the first time since I met him, I can read whatever’s happening behind his eyes.

Concern.

"You can't stay here tonight," he says.

Eduard

She doesn't come quietly.

I didn't expect her to. I find I would have been disappointed if she did.

She stands in the middle of my living room, gold hair in loose waves around her shoulders, wearing the oversized sweatshirt and soft pants she went back for while I held the café doorway. She takes in the floor-to-ceiling windows and the city thirty-two floors below, then she turns and looks at me.

"You kidnapped me," she says.

"You got in the car willingly."

"You didn't tell me it was your car. Or that your car was a moving vault. Or that we'd be driving for forty minutes." She pauses. "Or that you live on the moon."

"It’s only thirty-two floors."

"Eduard." She says my name like she wants it to function as a complete sentence. I've been addressed by generals, by judges, by a man holding a knife to my ribs, and none of them have ever made my name sound quite so much like an indictment. "This is kidnapping."

"You're not restrained."

She dips her head and looks at me from the top of her eyes. “Yet,” she mutters, collapsing onto the couch.

She shouldn't be funny right now. She watched a man die barely two hours ago. She's standing in a stranger's fortress in her softest clothes, and she's still reaching for the joke, still throwing light at the dark to see if it sticks. I've watched hard men crumble over less than her last two hours.

Her arms are crossed over her chest, and I watch as she momentarily loses herself and pulls them apart to lean on her knee and hide her face in her hands. Then she gathers herself again.

The apartment isn’t warm. My sister has said so on several occasions in the tone of someone leaving a note in a margin. I've never felt the lack of it until now, watching a barista in a sweatshirt sit in my living room like a lit window in a dark building.

The sweatshirt slips off one shoulder when she recrosses her arms.

I grab a bottle of water from the fridge.

"You said I couldn't stay at the café," she says. "You didn't say anything about bringing me here."

"Jasper was handling the detail at the building. This was the most secure option available in the timeframe."

"The timeframe." She repeats it back at me with a flatness that doesn't suit her face. "What timeframe? You didn't explain anything. You said we needed to go, and then you opened the car door, and I got in because I was scared. Now I'm thirty-two floors above the city in a penthouse that looks like a photograph of a penthouse, and my cats are alone, and you still haven't explained anything."

She's right. I didn't explain. I made a calculation, she was in shock, moving her was the priority, and explanation duringextraction is a liability. That's the truth of it. It's also, I'm aware, not a sentence she'll find satisfying.

There's a second truth underneath it that I'm handling separately. When I found out the hit was happening and I wasn’t there to protect her, something in my chest made a decision before my brain was consulted. Every action since has been my brain drawing up paperwork to justify it.

I carry the water to her and set it on the low table in front of the couch.

She holds my gaze as I sit in the chair across from her. It's the correct distance for the situation. Close enough that she can see my face. Far enough that she doesn't feel cornered. Far enough, also, for me, because from the moment she crashed into my chest, I haven’t wanted anything more than her hands on me.

"The man who looked at you last night," I say. "He works for an organization called the Popov crew. They operate in the eastern quarter of the city. They've been building a problem that I've been monitoring."

"Gerald," she says.

"Gerald was part of that problem. He was moving their money. He got sloppy, and someone decided he was a risk."