Page 12 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

“My life.”

She quirks a brow at me. “Rude of it.”

“Yes.”

“You can answer.”

“I know.” I shrug and focus on her. “I’ll do it later.”

Her mouth curves, and I kiss her again because I don’t trust myself with words tonight. With her, words keep trying to become things I cannot afford.

The second time is slower. She stops joking halfway through and holds onto me as if she wants to memorize the shape of my shoulders, my breathing, the scar at my ribs when her hand finds it. She doesn’t ask about the scar. I like her more for that. I hate her a little for how easy she makes it to forget.

I ask for her number, and she gives it to me.

“Use it wisely,” she says. “I charge emotionally for stupid calls.”

Afterward, she falls asleep with one hand against my chest, fingers curled there like she’s claimed a piece of me for the night. I stay awake because men like me don’t sleep easily beside women like her. I watch the tiny movements of her face and think of every reason I should be gone before morning.

The phone lights again. No name this time. Just the emergency code every Volkov lieutenant knows and hopes never to see. I slide out from under Cara’s hand and take the call before it can ring a second time.

For three seconds, no one speaks.

Then a man in Moscow says, “Antonov residence. Fire.”

I stand before I understand standing. Cara shifts on the bed, one bare shoulder exposed, her hair across her cheek. A few minutes ago, this suite belonged to heat, skin, and the stupid peace men like me are trained to distrust. Now I’m naked in a hotel kitchen with a phone pressed to my ear, and my body feels like it has stepped away from me.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Security feed cut. Gate feed gone. Fire inside the house. Multiple points.”

“My parents?”

The man doesn’t answer fast enough.

I place the next call myself.

Maksim answers on the first ring. No greeting. “I know.”

The tile beneath my feet is cold. I notice that because my mind has become useless and wants small facts. Tile. Phone. Counter. Cara asleep behind a half-closed door. My mother’s message still in my phone from hours ago.

Goodnight. Come home safely.

“Maksim.”

“I’m moving men now,” he says. “Stay on the line.”

The screen changes. A live feed opens, jerking and grainy, carried by one of our men running through snow toward the house where I was born.

My house is burning in Moscow. Flames have eaten the west side already. Black smoke pours from shattered windows. Men shout in Russian. Someone drags a hose across the frozen ground. Another team moves toward the rear entrance, then backs off when the door belches flame from inside.

“They blocked the exits,” Maksim says, breath rough from movement. “Suppression system is dead. Accelerant everywhere.”

I can see him now. Coat open. No hat. Men part for him because even fire doesn’t make them forget who he is.

My place is at his back. Instead, I’m standing in Boston with a phone and Cara’s taste in my mouth.

My hand grips the phone. I do nothing. That’s the worst part. Doing nothing. Being nothing. A body in another country, while everything that made me a son burns on a screen the size of my palm.