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“I thought you killed him?” Eduard stared at me like I had two heads. I still couldn’t bring myself to look at him directly, to answer the dozens of questions he undoubtedly had.
Roan jogged the rest of the way, slowing down and eyeing Eduard warily the closer he got. “Adidas,” he said with a curt nod.
Eduard made a face before turning his attention to me, still speaking in Russian. “Ifhe’sstill alive, then who the fuck did we get rid of last week?”
I ignored Eduard’s questions and stepped closer to Roan, lowering my voice. “What are you doing? I told you to stay in the car.”
Worry marred every part of Roan’s face, from his eyes to the downward curve of his mouth. His hand lifted, like he was going to touch me, but he clenched it into a fist and dropped it again, flicking a cautious glance at Eduard. “It looked like something was wrong.”
Sighing, I leaned forward, resting my forehead against his. So brave and so fucking stupid. He didn’t even bring the gun with him. I didn’t know what his brilliant plan had been, but I appreciated the gesture all the same.
Roan gripped my bicep gently, exhaling his own steadying breath.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Eduard asked, his arms spread wide, his gun still in his hand. “Why the fuck is he here and what the… fucking fuck, Sasha?!”
I pulled away from Roan and faced Eduard, squaring my shoulders. I hada lotof explaining to do, I knew that. My only hope was that he listened to it all before making up his mind. “Roan got into the box today. It wasn’t emeralds,” I replied in English, for Roan’s benefit.
“Then what was it?” Eduard took the cue and switched to English as well, tossing a suspicious glare at Roan every now and again.
Roan fished the flash drive out of his pocket and held it up.
“What the fuck is that?” Eduard asked, stepping forward and squinting at it.
“Sergei Sidorov’s files,” I replied.
Eduard’s dark gaze snapped up to mine, widening again. “The fuck you just say?”
I nodded, imploring him to believe me, if not by my words, than by my grim expression.
“Get rid of it!” Eduard lunged for the flash drive. Roan made no move to stop him.
“No!” I snatched it from Roan’s palm a second before Eduard. “It’s leverage.”
“It’s a death sentence! Besides whatever the hell this is,” Eduard said, gesturing between Roan and I with his gun. “If Sergei finds out you have that, he’ll killallof us.”
Roan flinched. I slid in front of him, grabbing the barrel of Eduard’s gun and shoving it down before he shot someone. Namely, me. “You don’t think I know that?”
“Then what the fuck are we still doing here? Kill the kid, burn the drive, and lay low for a while.”
“I can’t.” Saying those two words out loud to someone like Eduard, someone from my world, was excruciating. Failure, weakness — it wasn’t tolerated. Even if I said it in Russian, so Roan couldn’t hear hear how pathetic I was, my stomach still seized.
“Why not?”
“I just... can’t.” Admitting I couldn’t stay away from him almost gutted me, butactuallystaying away would have been a far worse pain. There were no words to explain it, it was just a feeling I had, the need to be near him. The only thing I could liken it to was the feeling you got in the dead of winter, when sunlight washed over you and held the cold at bay. I didn’t want to go back to the cold now that I knew I could feel something else, something better.
Roan’s fingers grazed the small of my back. I couldn’t tell if it was silent questioning or an attempt at reassurance, but I shifted my weight to my back foot so his hand laid flat against me.
“Fuck, Sasha!” Eduard spun away, swearing even more in Russian. He whipped back around and stormed up to me, shoving his finger in my face instead of the gun. “How could you do this? You’re so goddamn stupid! Youknowwhat happened to Pavel!”
“Of course I know,” I hissed back at him.
“Thenwhy?”
“Don’t you think I tried? I tried to stop, to stay away.” I brandished my left forearm, riddled with the cigarette burns, marks of my shame. “Itried, Eduard!”
“Not hard enough!”
I took a step forward and snatched his gun hand, forcing the barrel to my forehead. “Then do what you know is right. Put me out of my misery.”
