Page 250 of Sexting His Assistant

She walks past him down the corridor, careful and steady, one hand briefly touching the wall when the dizziness catches up with her.

I take one step toward her. Then I stop.

Because if I follow her now, I will ask her to understand. If I ask her to understand, she will look at me like I’m asking her to choose between me and Misha. And if she has to choose today, I already know I will lose.

Pavel comes into the room slowly.

He sees the laptop turned toward the empty chair.

He sees my face.

Pavel says, “Do you want me to continue tracing Hale?”

I look at the doorway Nina walked through.

For one brief second, I let myself remember Misha as he was before all of this. Laughing in my kitchen. Standing beside my mother on her birthday. Carrying a half-asleep little Nina from my family’s old sitting room to his car while she complained into his shoulder. Telling me, years later, that if I ever dragged her into my world, he would kill me himself.

Maybe that was not a joke. Maybe it was a warning.

I turn back to Pavel. “Yes.”

Pavel says, “And if we find him?”

I look at him. There’s a pause before I answer. “Bring him to me alive.”

Pavel nods. “Understood.”

I hear the word and almost tell him I’m sick of it.

Instead, I close the laptop with Misha’s face still on the screen.

I’m about to go after the brother of the woman I’m in love with.

There is no way to do that without losing something.

27

NINA

I stand by the window in the blue guest room and watch the garden as if something useful might happen if I stare long enough.

Nothing does.

The same guards move along the same paths. The same trees bend slightly in the afternoon wind. The same car has been parked near the side entrance for the last hour, probably with a man inside pretending not to watch my window.

I’m tired of this house.

Which is kind of unfair, given the house has been kind to me in the only way a house can be kind. It’s quiet. It’s safe.

Nobody says prisoner, nobody says trapped, nobody says you are here because your brother might be involved in something terrible.

But the truth is still there.

I press my forehead lightly against the window and close my eyes.

My head hurts less today. That should be a good thing. Instead, it gives me too much room to think.

I sit, sleep, drink tea, answer medical questions, and wait.