Page 123 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

He reaches for his coffee with one shaking hand.

“Good,” I say. “Then open the door and let him see the fire.”

29

CARA

When I make it back to the north wing, morning has already reached the estate.

My slippers brush over the runner. Dmitri has gone back into the hunt. Oleg is being watched. Patrick is still alive somewhere because dead men can’t bargain, and that thought follows me all the way down the corridor.

I want a couple of hours. Breakfast, a shower, and time with Mikhail in the nursery. Maybe a normal conversation with Kathryn that doesn’t involve guns, fake charities, or my brother turning survival into a career. Instead, I find Kathryn in the living room with a packed bag at her feet.

For a second, my brain refuses to read it correctly.

She stands near the low table, one hand gripping the strap of her handbag, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, her face pale and set. Mikhail’s toy cars are lined on the rug behind her. The red one is missing. Mikhail gave it to Dmitri because it wins.

“What is that?” I ask, stopping near the archway.

Kathryn looks at the bag, then back at me. “My bag.”

My throat tightens. “I can see that.”

She folds both arms across her chest. “I’m going home.”

I have no words left for her. Some selfish part of me thought she would stay because I needed her. Because Mikhail needed her. Moscow was impossible, and Kathryn had always been the person who could make impossible days feel like bad errands.

“You can’t,” I say before I think better of it.

Kathryn’s eyebrows lift. “Excuse me?”

I reach for the back of a chair, then let go. “That came out wrong.”

“No,” Kathryn says, stepping around the bag. “That came out honest.”

I rub both hands over my face. “Evan is connected to dangerous people now.”

Kathryn laughs once, short and wrong. “Yes, Cara. I got that part when armed strangers came to my apartment and I had to fly across the world with a four-year-old and a lunchbox code.”

“Kathryn,” I say, moving closer.

She steps back. That hurts more than anything.

“I have a life,” Kathryn says, pointing toward the window as if Boston sits on the other side of the glass. “I have an apartment. A preschool job. Parents who think I’m on some emergency trip. I need to pay bills, Cara.”

Her eyes are red from crying, and guilt stings through my chest. I didn’t notice my best friend falling apart after she got here. While she answered my kid’s questions about why dinosaurs have tiny arms, I sat there picking through my own life.

“I also have an ex-boyfriend who helped your brother reach my best friend’s child,” she mutters.

My chest caves in around the words.

Kathryn’s voice shakes, but she keeps going. “Evan can’t blow up my life from a safe distance while I hide in Moscow and wait for Russian men to fix it.”

“They’re not just Russian men,” I say, then hate myself for how weak that sounds.

Kathryn’s eyes narrow. “That’s your defense?”

“No,” I say, swallowing hard. “I don’t have one.”