Page 98 of Fractured Ties

It allowed Maya to explore the dank apartment—frankly, dank was a nice description. He had very little furniture, and what he did have was worn and severely outdated. The floor was a cracked linoleum that made noise when she walked on it, and in the kitchen, an entire counter of empty vodka bottles littered the space.

She wouldn’t say the space was dirty, but it was lonely.

And too empty.

Maya found Kolya in his bedroom—or rather, pulling items from the closet when she walked in. Even here, his bed was nothing more than a mattress and box spring on the floor with a sheet tossed over it, and clothes piled up on the side.

“Why here?”

“Hmm?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Here, this place. Why do you live here?”

And live like this?

She held back from adding that, too.

“I don’t follow,” Kolya said.

“Well, you have money.”

And he was a Boykov.

Kolya shrugged, seemingly understanding what she wasn’t saying, and turned around to face her. “I didn’t even need this place. Just to stay out of the fucking rain is enough for me, yes?”

Maya frowned. “It seems very … lonely.”

“That’s how I liked it, dushka.”

“That’s a little sad.”

Kolya dropped a black duffle bag on the floor, and a few items of clothing inside it as he bent down to rearrange the items. “I never needed anything else.”

“But … don’t you want a home? Something to come back to at the end of the day?”

He hesitated and then glanced up at her. “I didn’t have anything to come home to.”

Didn’t, she noticed.

Past, not present.

“Okay,” she whispered.

Kolya nodded, and went back to his job of packing up whatever clothes he seemed to want to take with him. Maya watched it all in silence—unusual silence, as he might tell her.

Because, yes, she was thinking.

Constantly, now.

About him.

• • •

The knocking echoed through the hotel room, and sent Maya flying out of the bathroom to answer the door. She’d ordered room service for lunch when Kolya called to say he wasn’t going to get back in time to eat with her, and it was just about the time the food should arrive.

She didn’t even think to look through the peephole.

Why should she?