Page 48 of The Last Dance

Yuri nodded. “Then we increase perimeter. No mail in or out unless it passes through Lin. Staff goes on lockdown.”

Vadim agreed, but his eyes were on me.

I looked at the shuttered window, then at him. “He knows where I am.”

Vadim didn’t argue.

I said, “He’s not going to come to the apartment, or the club. He’s going to come here.”

Vadim’s jaw flexed, but he didn’t blink. “He will try.”

Yuri made a note in his book. “We can be ready.”

Vadim waited until Yuri was gone, then sat down on the edge of the desk, directly in my line of sight. His voice was low. “Tell me if there is anything else. Any message, any sign, any thing he has sent you.”

I wanted to lie, but I didn’t. “That’s all,” I said. “I swear.”

He stared at me for a long time, and I realized he believed me. The belief landed harder than any interrogation would have. It made me feel seen, in a way I was not ready for.

I looked at the letter. “He’s going to try.”

Vadim nodded, slow. “Let him.”

There was a silence, then: “Why keep me here? Why not send me away?”

He was ready for the question. “You are safer here.”

I shook my head, but didn’t argue.

Vadim said, softer: “And I want you here. That is also the truth.”

The words hung in the air like a foreign object.

I let the moment go. “What happens now?”

He looked at the letter again. “We wait. We watch. And if he comes, I will handle it.”

There was nothing else to say.

I left the room and walked the corridor, feeling the cold stone under my bare feet, the chill that ran up through my bones. The estate was as secure as a tomb, but I had seen enough history to know that all fortresses fall. The only question was how loud it would be when it happened.

I went back to the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed, and stared at my hands. I tried to read, but the words on the page slid off my brain. I thought about the man writing the letters, and the man reading them, and the thing in between them that had somehow become me.

* * * *

At dinner, Lin served Vadim a steak so rare it could have mooed. He poured me a glass of juice, and did not ask if I wanted vodka. The meal was silent except for the scrape of silverware, and the distant sound of the grounds crew somewhere far outside.

I watched Vadim eat, methodical and precise, every movement measured as if he could control the outcome of the universe by the way he held his fork.

When he was done, he said, “Do you want to see the letter again?”

I shook my head. “Not tonight.”

He nodded.

We ate dessert—a cold, perfect square of something French—and when we were finished, he took my plate and carried it to the kitchen himself.

I watched him go, and wondered if he ever slept, or if he just waited for the world to try him. When I got up to leave, he was already back in the main corridor, looking out at the black, unlit world.