Page 45 of Captured By the Pakhan

"Are you going to tell me?"

"Not tonight."

"Why not?"

"Because you would look at me differently afterward," he says, "and I have been enjoying being looked at like this for approximately four minutes, and I'm not finished."

I take my hand off him.

I take it off because I have to, because if I leave it there for one more second I'm going to do something, and I put a whole foot of space between us and cross my arms.

"I need you to understand something," I say. "What happened in your office was — it was eleven days of nothing and a very long night. That's what it was."

"Is that true?"

"It's the version I can operate inside of."

"That is not the same as true."

"No," I admit. "It isn't."

We stand there.

"Say the thing you actually want," Ilya says. "You have my word about what happens either way. That has not changed and it will not, and I'm not going to ask you again, because I asked you once and I meant it and I do not intend to make you do it twice."

And that's it. That's the whole thing.

He isn't going to keep asking. He's not going to circle it, or wear me down, or make it easier by deciding for me. He asked once, and the answer is standing there permanently available, and the only person who can pick it up is me.

"There's a boy asleep two doors down."

"There are three closed doors between here, and my son and I have never in my life been quiet about anything," he says. "So that is a genuine problem and not a reason."

I laugh. It comes out of me sideways, and I hate it.

"Fine," I say. "Fine. Yes. Get over here."

He doesn't get over here.

He goes to the bag.

"Sit down," Ilya says. "On the bed. Boots off."

And I do it, which tells me something about myself I'm not going to examine tonight, and when he turns around he's holding something small and I can't see what it is until he's a foot away.

It's a feather.

Long, dark, stripped down to a fine point at the tip, the shaft wrapped in something. It's a ridiculous object. It's the single most ridiculous object I have ever seen in the hand of a man who moves weapons in shipping containers, and I actually laugh.

"You brought a feather to Kansas."

"I did."

"You packed that. In a bag. On a Thursday."

"I did." Not a flicker. "You have spent twelve days in my house being extremely difficult to surprise, and I have thought about very little else, and I have concluded that the only thing you have no defense against is patience." He turns it over. "So we are going to find out."

"That's not⁠—"