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I lingered in the doorway, the chill wrapping around my bare shoulders, the Coke can sweating in my hand. Was he talking about me?

“He’s unpredictable,” Stas said. “You don’t reason with a man like that. You contain him. Permanently.”

I froze, my pulse kicking up.

“I’ll keep things calm for now, but if he steps out of line again, I want it handled.”

I gripped the can until it dented. My breath fogged the air. Maybe I’d misinterpreted. Maybe he meant someone else. But what could have happened in the past few hours for him to leave the warmth of his bed to make a phone call in the cold?

For a moment, I stood there, heart hammering against my ribs, staring at the faint curl of his breath in the cold. The man I’d fought beside hours ago. The same one who’d moaned my name while backing his ass up on my tongue.

And now he was out here, deciding whether I lived or died.

I swallowed hard. If he tried to kill me, he’d better get it right because he wouldn’t get a second shot.

Stas stayed on the porch when he hung up. He drew a cigarette from his pocket, the motion slow and familiar. He flicked the lighter, the flare briefly lighting the planes of his face as he touched it to the end of the cigarette.

He inhaled, and the smoke wrapped around him like armor. After a beat, I stepped out and hissed. The air hit me, the winter biting at my bare feet. Stas turned, the ember glowing in his hand. I scanned his features for guilt, for the tremor that would mean admission, for his eyes to skitter away as soon as contact was made.

But he didn’t flinch.

Our eyes collided, propelling me back to hours before in the bathroom, with the world peeled away and our pasts forgotten. His eyes stared into mine, unyielding, harboring none of the earlier heat and surrender. Now they were cold and distant.

Stas raised the cigarette to his mouth, took a puff, then exhaled slowly. Smoke drifted between us, thin and gray.

“I didn’t know you were out here,” I said before he got some crazy idea that I was stalking him. I’d done so in the past, but not this time.

“It’s fine.”

The silence stretched long enough for the cold to crawl up my bare legs. Stas took another drag, the ember flaring, a brief pulse of light against the hard lines of his face before it dulled again. Smoke ghosted around him, wrapping him in that calm, quiet authority I’d hated since the first time we met.

“Yelena always hates when I smoke,” Stas said. “I quit years ago but started smoking again when she left.”

“I get it. When Zasha left, he took everything I was fighting for with him.”

I clamped my mouth shut, annoyed that I’d spilled my feelings out in the opening. That first year, when they disappeared, was brutal. I’d searched everywhere I could to find them. All leads had only brought us to dead ends, carefully orchestrated by my brother.

“Can’t believe they came here to fucking Kansas City.”

Stas snorted. “Guess they really wanted to get away from us.”

“Do you ever worry that us being here will bring our lifestyle to them?”

“Yes, but I was cautious in getting here.” He raised his brow in a silent question.

“No one knows where I am.”

“With your fancy phone? Those things are just evidence waiting to fall into the wrong hands.”

“Can’t survive without technology. The criminal world is a lot more sophisticated than two decades ago.”

“Makes you wish for the simpler times.”

“The technology can be helpful.” I nodded at the cigarette he held between his lips. “Got any more of those?”

“Last one.”

“Then let me have a drag.”