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No sign of Kirill.
I thought this is what I wanted. Just a normal job with a normal boss, no drama, no heart-racing kitchen friskiness. But even Lana has noticed something is wrong.
“Are you getting enough sleep?” she asked last night at dinner. “You have bags under your eyes.”
“Maybe that’s just my face,” I snapped, way more feisty than necessary.
“Based on the attitude, I’ll go with my theory,” she said primly.
I apologized and we dropped the subject. But only because I couldn’t tell my sister that I was losing sleep over the man she told me to be careful about. I especially couldn’t tell her that my nightly fantasies now involved his warm, calloused hand around my neck and his minty breath filling that tiny, overheated elevator.
When I come back on Monday after a day off, I’m almost desperate enough for dreamless sleep that I’m considering finding Kirill. Maybe the offer he made in the elevator wasn’t a cruel joke. Maybe if I find him and beg him for release like he told me to do, he’ll finish what we started.
Then I could put all of this behind me.
Kirill, his skilled hand, his mysterious brother—it can all be in the past. Forgotten and never mentioned again.
“Who did you have to sleep with to getthatassignment?” Natalia blurts, startling me out of my thoughts.
I blink back to reality and turn to her. We’re in the back room getting ready for the day, but I haven’t been listening to a thing she’s said. “What?”
Natalia points to the schedule on the back wall. “You’re going to the third floor today.”
I spin around and scan the assignment boards. “No. There’s been a mistake.”
“Sonya doesn’t make mistakes,” Natalia says. “If she wrote it there—especially under your name—you know she meant it. That bitch hates you.”
“You have no idea,” I mutter.
I haven’t seen Kirill since I broke into Ilya’s apartment, but I’ve had to deal with Sonya every day. Clearly, she thought my antics that day were firing-worthy, because every day I continue to show up, she gets a little meaner. Even Natalia has started to steer clear of me just in case she catches a stray.
“You are who you run with,” Natalia explained when I asked her about it. “You are someone Sonya hates, and I can’t afford to make her hate me anymore. Sorry.”
I can’t even get mad at that.
“Do you really think I’m supposed to go up there?” I ask.
“You think it might be a trick?”
I shrug. “Maybe she wants to get me up there just to frame me or something. Get me fired.”
Natalia considers it and then shakes her head. “Sonya is too by-the-book for anything like that. That sounds like a scheme I’d put together, though.”
I turn to her, eyes narrowed. “Are you sayingyouwant me to get fired?”
She laughs. “No. I’d do it and then make you tell me what you found up there. I’ve been dying to know.”
I pinch my mouth shut. I already know what’s up there.Whois up there.
And you aren’t going to tell a soul.
Even if Kirill hadn’t warned me, I wouldn’t have said anything. It’s not my secret to tell. Besides, as weird as it sounds, I like being one of the only people who has seen the softer side of Kirill. I wasn’t lying when I told him he could use the whole caregiver schtick to get laid. Some of the women on staff would be even more in love with him than they already are if they knew he also had a kind heart.
“But I guess you’ll know soon enough.” Natalia nudges me toward the door. “We can meet for lunch and you can fill me in.”
“I have to come back alive first,” I say melodramatically.
I give a final wave and then start what feels like a gallows walk up the stairs.
