LOGINChapter 75Sasha's PovThe drive is fourteen minutes.I know because I counted them. I pulled on a jacket over what I slept in, took the car keys from the hook by the door, I didn't stop to think about it. Because the sound he made on the phone is not something I'm capable of hearing, then doing nothing about. That's the fact of it. I can dress it up in parameters and operational logic but the fact is I heard that sound and I was out the door in under two minutes.He opens the hotel door before I knock. He must have heard the lift.He looks terrible. His eyes red, jaw tight, still in the clothes he fell asleep in. He's holding himself very still the way people do when they're trying not to fall apart in front of someone.I step inside without waiting to be asked.He sits on the edge of the bed. I pull the chair from the desk and put it in front of him. He sit in it with my forearms on my knees and I look at him."Tell me," I say."It was bad," he says. His voice is still uneven. "It
Chapter 74Nico's PovNeither of us mentions it in the morning.That's what I notice first. We sit at the table with our coffee and the manifests from Gdansk. Neither of us brings up the flinch or the hand or the chair scraping back, and the not-mentioning of it is so loud it takes up most of the room.I watch him read. He has the pen behind his ear again, he doesn't know he does that.After a while I say, "I want to talk about last night."He doesn't look up. "The dock or the drive back.""The drive back."He puts the pen down. Looks at me."You don't have to," he says."I know I don't have to." I wrap both hands around my cup. "I want to understand it, not to make it uncomfortable. Just….I want to understand, so I don't do it again."He is quiet for a moment. "It wasn't your fault.""I know that too. That's not what I'm asking." I hold his gaze. "I'm asking what it was. Because I know what it looked like from my side, and I know what it wasn't, but I don't know what it was."He look
Chapter 73Sasha's PovGdansk in November is exactly as unpleasant as it sounds.We're parked on a service road running parallel to the eastern dock gate. The manifests Gregor sent matched three specific freight containers routed through this port in the last six weeks. Two of them have already moved. The third is scheduled for loading at two in the morning.It is currently half past midnight."Tell me again about the subsidiary," I say.Nico shifts in the passenger seat. He's been holding his coffee for twenty minutes without drinking it, which means he's thinking. "Vescari Maritime Solutions. On paper it's a legitimate freight company, registered in Malta. In practice it moves product through three Baltic ports on rotation. The route variation makes it harder to track pattern." He pauses. "My father set it up eight years ago. I inherited oversight of it when I took over.""Does anyone else have access.""Two people. My logistics head and his deputy." He looks at me. "Both have bee
Chapter 72Nico's PovI come back to myself in pieces.Then the sound of rain against glass. Then the weight of an arm across my back, firm and still, and I know before I'm fully awake that it's him because there is nobody else on this earth who holds still like that. Like he decided to do it, now he's doing it and that's the end of the matter.I don't move right away."You're awake," he says. Not a question. His voice is low and completely level, like he's been sitting here in the dark being level for a while now."Yes," I say."Okay."He doesn't move his arm. I don't ask him to. I lie there, breathe and let my heart rate do whatever it needs to do, and he just stays there, one hand flat between my shoulder blades, not rubbing or moving, just present. After a while I say, "How bad was it.""You said my name," he says. "You sounded frightened.""I'm sorry.""Don't apologise for sleeping."I turn over slowly. He shifts to give me room and then he's just sitting there at the edge of th
Chapter 71Sasha's PovI should have said no.That's the thought I woke up with. I should have said no at the door, sent him back downstairs, told him to get a hotel. I had seventeen reasonable things I could have said and I said “take your coat off”, which is arguably the least reasonable of all of them.He's asleep on the sofa.I can see the back of his head from the kitchen doorway. He's on his side, one arm off the cushion, the blanket I gave him pulled up to his jaw. He's been asleep since midnight. It's half past six now.I make coffee and I don't look at my arm.He wakes up while I'm going through the Bratva documents at the table. I hear him shift, then sit up, then a sound that's almost a groan, because the sofa is not long enough for him and his back is going to tell him about it."Morning," he says, voice thick."There's coffee."He gets up slowly, comes to the kitchen and pours a cup. Leans against the counter exactly the way he did in my kitchen two days ago and looks at
Chapter 70Nico's PovI stare at my phone for forty-seven minutes.The voice note sits there. It was delivered because I opened it like an idiot the second it came through and now the two grey ticks are mocking me from the screen.Twenty-two seconds of me breathing in my sleep and saying his name.Twenty-two seconds.I put the phone face down on the mattress. Then I pick it back up. Then I put it down again. Then I sit on the edge of the bed with my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands and I have a very calm, very quiet internal crisis about the fact that I cannot even be unconscious around this man without embarrassing myself.My phone rings.I nearly drop it.It's him.I answer before I can decide not to."Before you say anything," I start."I wasn't going to say anything," Sasha says. His voice is flat and very careful in the way it gets when he's controlling something."Okay.""I'm calling to check on the Naples situation.""Right. The Naples situation." I stand up and sit b
The back door of the SUV slams with a finality that echoes in the empty lot. Sasha doesn’t waste a second. He shoves me down across the wide back seat, climbing over me like a predator who’s been leashed too long. The tinted windows are already fogging from the heat rolling off us.I hit the leathe
Chapter 63: Left Knee Or RightNico's POV We track Boris to a quiet dacha on the edge of Macau. An old safe house that would seem unoccupied if we didn’t know he was in there right now. Sasha drives. I ride shotgun, watching the snow-dusted pines slide past the windows. Neither of us speak much. W
Chapter 62: Walk out and disappear' Nico's POV We’ve been at it for three days straight, holed up in the warehouse, fueled by black coffee and takeout. I must say, the last three days have been pretty awkward—but not the bad type of awkward. The satisfying type. After seven whole months, three da
Chapter 61Let's not talk about last night Nico's POV Morning creeps in through the blinds. There is a very delicious ache all over my body. I feel ravaged and kind of happy. But the warmth from hours ago is gone.I snap my eyes open and look around the room.Sasha is not here.When did I even fa







