Page 50 of Captured By the Pakhan

"That is the thing I actually did. Not the marriage — the marriage was an arrangement and arrangements are what we are. What I did was find a version of decency that required nothing from me, and wear it for six years, and call it kindness. And when she went into that bathroom she had been alone in my house for two thousand nights, and I was in the city, and the last thing I said to her that morning was that the car would be back on Thursday."

The room is quiet for a while.

"The patience," Raven says. "What you did tonight. That's where that came from."

"Yes."

"Ilya—"

"I want to be clear, because it is going to sound worse than it is if I let you assemble it yourself." I turn my head. "I never touched her. Not once, in a way she did not initiate. What I learned in that house was how to be in a room with a woman who couldn’t be touched and not make it worse, which is a very specific skill, and it took me six years, and I learned it far too late to do her any good at all."

She's looking at me. I can see the shape of her in the dark and not much else.

"You're a better man than the version of you I built in the file," she says.

"No."

"Ilya—"

"No. Listen." I set the glass down harder than I mean to. “I have never hit a woman. I have done a great many things to people that are considerably worse, however. I have put eleven men in the ground personally and arranged more than that. Last week I gave an order about a man in Newark that I would not describe to you in this room. I'm not a good man, and I have no plans to become one, and I'm not telling you any of this so that you will decide otherwise."

"Then why are you telling me?"

"Because I want to be a good father," I say, "and those turn out to be two entirely separate projects, and I'm only attempting the second."

Something in her face moves that I can't see properly and would give a great deal to.

Then she puts her glass down and kisses me.

And for about ninety seconds it is very good and going somewhere — she is over me, her hands are in my hair, I have got the sheet somewhere and a fistful of it, and there is a version of the next two hours that both of us can see from here.

Then she stops.

Not gradually. She goes rigid, completely, from the shoulders down, and her mouth comes off mine, and she says:

"Stop."

I take my hands off her before she reaches the end of the word.

Both of them, up and away, palms open, and I move back until my shoulders are against the headboard and there is a foot of air between us.

"Done," I say.

She's breathing hard. She hasn't moved off me — she's still there, braced on her hands, and I can feel the tremor going through both her arms.

I do not ask her what happened. I do not ask her whether she is all right, or whether it was something I did, or any of the four other questions standing in my mouth, because every one of them would put the burden of the next sentence on her. She has just spent something to say a single word, and I'm not going to charge her again immediately.

So I wait.

It takes her a long time. Perhaps two minutes, which is a very long time in a dark room.

"It's not you," she says finally.

"I did not think it was."

"Yes, you did."

"...Yes. Briefly." I let a beat go. "You may take as long as you like, or you may take your whiskey and go back to sleep, and we will not discuss it in the morning. Both are available. I'm not owed an explanation."