Page 62 of Captured By the Pakhan

"All of it."

He doesn't apologise and doesn't explain and doesn't ask me what I intend to do about it, which I appreciate more than I can say.

"Then you know."

"I know he's an AD. I know he's got a name under his name." I come in and shut the door. "And I know something you don't, so sit down."

He doesn't sit down. He never sits down.

"The man on Rennick," I say. "Four hundred frames on that card and not one of them is you. Nineteen days, from Cedar City, and nobody has come for me." I put my hands on the back of the chair. "Danesi's not hunting the Hellhound through me. He's keeping me. I'm not a lead, I'm a piece he hasn't decided how to use yet, and he has known exactly where I'm for eleven days and hasn't touched me."

Ilya is very still.

"Why?"

"Because a fugitive who dies in a Bratva house solves everything for him," I say. "The file closes. The agent who could contradict him is dead in a criminal's basement, which is exactly where a traitor ought to end up. He doesn't need to arrest me. He needs me here, and then he needs a reason to come and get me."

The silence goes on for a while.

"You have thought about this a great deal," Ilya says.

"For four days."

"And you did not tell me."

"I'm telling you now."

"Why now?"

And that's the question, isn't it.

"Because you left the door open," I say.

He looks at me.

And whatever is behind his face, it isn't triumph and isn't strategy — it's a man who has just been handed something and is not sure he's allowed to hold it.

"I have had eleven years of people who tell me what I want," he says. "I have three men who will die for me and one who will argue with me, and not one person in that entire list has ever walked into this room and made my situation worse in order to make it true."

"Ilya—"

"I did not leave the door open by accident," he says.

Nobody says anything.

And then I cross the room and take his face in both hands and kiss him, and it is not like the office and it is not like Kansas, because both of those were things that happened to me and this is a decision I make standing up.

"Upstairs," I say.

His control breaks for one sharp second, hands locking around my waist as he kisses me with such passion I wonder if we’ll be able to make it upstairs. The kiss is enough to steal the air from my lungs, as he drags me against his hard body before catching himself once more.

"Raven—"

"I'm not asking."

He puts a hand around my wrist. Not stopping me. Just holding.

"There is something I want," Ilya says, "and you are going to say yes because you are in a particular mood tonight, and I do not want it on those terms. So you will hear what it is downstairs, with your clothes on, and then you will go upstairs and think about it, and if you still want it in an hour you will come and tell me."