Page 158 of Cruel Demands

Keep them. Give away anything you don’t want. Mikhail can replace it.

I almost laugh after sending it. It’s something the old me would never have said. But the old me did not know what it felt like to have armed guards search Moscow for American breakfast food at midnight. She had never watched a dangerous man stand barefoot at a stove making pancakes because she asked for them. She had never carried his child.

Mikhail rises from the table. “You may have the public list,” he says. “Not the private contractors.” There’s a pause. He turns away from us, phone pressed to his ear. “No. You do not need the security route.”

That is stranger. Olga has every reason to stand beside him at a podium this morning. She has no reason to know how he will enter the building.

Nikita’s expression is blank, but she’s focused. Three dots appear beneath Anya’s name. Disappear. Then return.

Just be careful, Taylor.

Mikhail says, “Why are you asking whether Orlov will attend?” The name pulls my attention away from the screen. He listens. His face becomes unreadable. “Who told you he was unavailable?”

Another pause.

I send Anya a heart. It feels inadequate after a year of friendship, shared rent, bad meals, complaints about professors, and whispered conversations after midnight. But anything longer would turn goodbye into negotiation.

I put the phone face down on the table. Mikhail continues, “You can meet with me at the hospital before the press conference.” His eyes narrow. “No. Not here.”

He ends the call. The kitchen is silent. “What did she want?” I ask.

Mikhail sets the phone on the table. “More than she is entitled to.”

His gaze moves to me. I glance down at my phone. Anya has not written again. “What did she want?” he asks.

“To know whether I was coming back for my things.”

“And are you?”

“No.”

Relief crosses his face before he conceals it.

His phone lights up again and he ignores it.

“Is something wrong?” I ask him.

“No,” he says. Nikita makes a quiet sound of disbelief. Mikhail ignores her. “Olga is ambitious. She likes to know which direction power is moving before anyone else does.”

It sounds like an explanation. It also sounds like something he’s telling himself. I fold his baby blanket carefully and set it on the table. A few minutes ago, Mikhail was imagining my family living beneath this roof. Now he’s studying a public event as if it might be a battlefield.

The hospital opening is supposed to celebrate his reforms later this morning. Doctors, donors, politicians, cameras. A clean public victory. Olga is supposed to be one more minister smiling for photographs.

But I’ve begun to understand Mikhail well enough to recognize the moment he senses a threat. His world has shifted around us again. And he still won’t let me in.

I touch my stomach and feel the pressing of little feet there. I’m not letting him fully in either, but I don’t know that that makes me feel better.

41

MIKHAIL

The man collapses halfway through my speech.

One moment, everyone is listening to me, their half smiles frozen on their faces, the way important people show you that they are Definitely Listening, and then he’s standing beside the donor tables with a glass in his hand. The next, the glass strikes the floor and his body follows it.

The room reacts exactly as it has been trained to react. Hospital staff rush toward him. Event security pushes the crowd backward. Reporters lift their cameras. Politicians attempt to appear concerned while making certain they remain visible.

My government protective detail closes around the stage. They are not the only security in the building. The hospital has contracted its own team for the opening, and Arkady has several of my men positioned throughout the event under the respectable fiction that they belong to my security and operations staff. Sergei is near the main entrance. Two more men are watching the service corridors.