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"Try me."

A shudder runs through her, and I feel her walls ripple around me. "Please."

"Again."

"Please, Alexei." Her voice cracks on my name. "Please let me come."

I reach around her hip and press two fingers against her clit, and she detonates. Her whole body locks and shakes, and the orgasm rips through her in waves that I feel gripping my cock from base to tip. I follow her over with three more strokes, burying myself deep and holding her hips flush against mine while I come harder than I have in years.

I collapse over her back, careful to keep my weight on my forearms. My forehead presses between her shoulder blades, and I feel her heartbeat hammering against my skin through her spine. The table is a wreck beneath us, papers everywhere, the freight map torn at one corner.

Her hand reaches back and finds the side of my face. Her fingers are shaking.

"Don't move yet," she says.

"I'm not going anywhere."

We stay like that until my breathing steadies and the sweat cools on my back. When I finally pull out, she turns over and sits on the edge of the table with her skirt bunched around her waist and her eyes closed, and I watch a bruise bloom on her hip where my hand held her.

I pull her off the table and onto the couch. She curls against my side without speaking, one hand resting on my chest over the dressing, and her breathing evens out before mine does. I stare at the ceiling while the library clock counts off the minutes and the reports lie scattered across the floor like a case file nobody will ever close.

My hand rests on her hip. Her pulse ticks against my ribs. Somewhere down the hall, a boy with my jaw and her eyes sleeps beneath a blanket, and the woman in my arms gave him life and a name and a childhood I'll never recover.

Morning comes through the east windows in a hard, pale line. I close my eyes against it and pull her closer, and sleep takes me before I can decide whether the weight on my chest is her head or the answer she still won't say.

14

ALEXEI

Iwake on the library couch with my neck bent against one armrest, my left leg hanging toward the floor, and every healing wound furious about the arrangement. Bright winter light pours through the east-facing windows. Beyond the glass, the sky is a hard, polished blue that makes my eyes ache.

“Someone should pull the curtains,” I mutter, lifting one hand over my face.

A woman clicks her tongue above me. “Someone should have taken his morning medication, changed his dressing, and eaten breakfast.”

I open my eyes again, half expecting Dr. Vera Markova.

Irina stands over the couch with a tray balanced against one hip. Her hair is combed into a tight bun, her white coat is fastened to the throat, and she has the expression of an executioner who expects cooperation.

This is the last face I want to see.

I’m still grateful she’s here.

“Hello, Sestra,” I say, finding enough charm to pull one corner of my mouth upward. I push myself upright, then stop when pain runs from my ribs into my abdomen. “What time is it?”

“Past noon.” Irina sets the tray on the library table and folds her arms. “You missed everything except the chance to make my day worse.”

I pick up my phone from beneath a Blacklist file. Six missed calls wait on the screen. Two are from Leonid, one from Abramov, two from Maksim, and the last comes from a number I saved only yesterday.

Polina Vetrova, Abramov’s fiancée, runs the best private maternity and genetics clinic in Moscow. I sent her Vera’s fake medical records. I also sent proof that someone had used Vera’s hospital file to reach Misha. Then I asked Polina to check only Vera’s files. Vera had gone to her clinic for scans and tests during her pregnancy, and Polina agreed to confirm the dates.

The number pulls me awake faster than pain.

Irina takes the phone from my hand. “You can plot against Moscow after I make sure you have taken your medications.”

“I don’t plot against all of Moscow,” I say, reaching for it. “Only the parts that deserve attention.”

She slips the phone into her coat pocket. “Walk.”