Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 81 - Chapitre 90

Chapter 81: Choose.

Sasha's PovMarco talks a great deal.That's my primary observation about him over the course of three hours. He is Italian in a way that feels like a full-time commitment. He uses his hands when he speaks, which I understand is cultural, but the volume seems optional and he doesn't exercise that option. He's not doing anything wrong. That's the other observation. He's not crossing a line or making a move. He's just sitting very close to Nico on the sofa and laughing at everything Nico says. Occasionally touching his arm when he makes a point, which happens often because Marco makes a great many points.I sit in the chair across the room and I read the Papadis follow-up report for the third time without absorbing a single word."Sasha," Nico says.I look up."Marco asked what region of Russia you're from.""Volgograd," I say, and look back at the report.Marco says something in Italian I don't acknowledge. Nico says something back that I also don't acknowledge, and I hear the shape

Chapter 82: Butterfly.

Nico's PovShe asks us the question and neither of us answers for long enough that she writes something in her notebook, which I decide not to think about."Let me rephrase," she says. "Not the mechanics, the function. What did the violence do for each of you, in the context of the relationship."Sasha is looking at the wall. He does this when he's deciding something. I've learned to wait it out."It was the only register we had," he says finally. "At the beginning. It was the only language that felt honest."She looks at him. "Honest in what sense.""In the sense that everything else was performance." He pauses. "The violence wasn't."She writes something. Then she looks at me."And for you."I look at my hands. "It felt like being seen," I say. "That sounds wrong.""It doesn't sound wrong," she says. "Keep going.""Most people either want something from me or they're afraid of me. Both of those things put distance between me and whoever I'm in the room with." I pause. "With him it

Chapter 83: Careful.

Sasha's PovWe walk for a while after the call before either of us says anything.I know who Matteo is. Nico told me about him months ago, in the way you tell someone about a thing that happened so it can't be used against you later. The version Nico gave was brief and factual and I'd filed it under irrelevant.Standing on the Arbat in the dark with Nico's wrist wrapped next to mine, it feels less irrelevant."I'm not calling him back," Nico says."I didn't ask.""You didn't have to." He glances at me. "I'm telling you anyway."I keep walking."Sasha.""I heard you," I say."Then why do you have that jaw.""I always have this jaw.""You have a specific jaw for specific situations and this is the Matteo one." He steps in front of me, which forces me to stop. He holds up his phone and turns the screen toward me. The message history is open. I read it. Matteo's message, brief and warm, and Nico's response, which he typed while I was apparently not watching.“Don't contact me again. I'm

Chapter 84: Ordinary

Sasha's PovThe second session is a Tuesday.She asks about the knife.Nico answers first, which I didn't expect, and he answers it honestly, which I also didn't expect at that speed. He talks about control and the absence of it, about wanting to feel something specific in the middle of a life that had trained him to feel nothing appropriate, and she listens, writes and doesn't react.Then she looks at me.I answer it.I talk for four minutes, which is the longest I have voluntarily spoken about a single subject outside of operational briefings in several years. She doesn't interrupt. When I finish she says, "What you're describing is a transfer of intensity. The pain was real, but it was standing in for other things. The question is whether you've identified what those other things are.""Yes," I say."Both of you?"Nico and I look at each other."Working on it," he says.She nods. Writes something. Then she says, "I want to try something. I want each of you to name one thing in thi

Chapter 85: Alive.

Nico's PovThe nightclub is called something in Russian I can't pronounce, on a street in Zamoskvorechye that doesn't look like it has a nightclub on it until you're standing at the door. Sasha's contact, a man named Oleg who owes him something from 2019 and has been paying it back in information ever since chose it. Loud enough to cover conversation. Dark enough to cover faces.It's also extremely crowded, which was not in the plan.We get through the door at half past eleven. Oleg is already inside, which I know because Sasha gets a message from him before we reach the back of the room. The music is heavy and continuous and my ears adjust to it slowly."Corner booth," Sasha says, close to my ear, which he has to be because of the volume, and that's fine, that's just logistics.We move through the crowd.Oleg is a small man in his fifties who looks like someone's accountant, which I suspect has served him extremely well in this line of work. He shakes Sasha's hand, looks at me with p

Chapter 86: Both

Chapter 86: BothSasha's PovHe doesn't go back to sleep.I know this because I don't sleep either, and for a long time after I pull him back down we just lie there in the dark with my arm around him and his hands gripping mine, and the room settles slowly around us into something quieter. The nightmare leaves residue. That's the thing about his, they don't end cleanly. A quality in the room that takes a while to thin out."You don't have to talk about it," I say."I know.""But you can."He's quiet for a moment. "It's the same dream usually. The room, the smell of it. Incense and that specific wood polish that I still can't smell anywhere without leaving immediately." He pauses. "What was different tonight was you in it.""You told me that.""I know. I'm…" He stops. "I want to tell you the rest, the part I haven't said properly." He shifts slightly. Like he's finding the right position for something heavy. "I was eleven the first time. He said it was private instruction, my father a

Chapter 87: The Line.

Nico's PovI find him in the training room at six the following morning.I've been awake since five, which is now my normal, which I accept without complaint because it was his normal first and it's the kind of thing that transfers when you share a life with someone for long enough. I didn't sleep well and I didn't expect to, because the image of his face on the phone yesterday is still sitting in my chest with its elbows on the table.He's at the heavy bag. No jacket, sleeves up, working through combinations with the methodical controlled pace that means he's not training, he's quieting something.I sit on the bench by the wall and I don't say anything.He works for another ten minutes. When he stops he braces both forearms on the bag and breathes."You could have slept," he says."I was awake.""Then you could have stayed in bed.""I could have done a lot of things." I look at him. "How bad is it."He steps back from the bag. Picks up the towel. "Gregor is managing it. The captain

Chapter 88: After

Sasha's Pov The warehouse is on the eastern edge of the port district. By the time we arrive the shooting has stopped, which is either good news or the other kind. It's the good kind. Our men are down behind two vehicles, two of them hit, neither critically, and the three who ambushed them are already gone, which tells me this was harassment, not termination. A message.We secure the perimeter and I check every man myself while Nico handles the freight documentation, cataloguing what was taken and what wasn't, because what wasn't taken matters as much as what was. That's something he taught me without trying to.Two hours later we're back in the car.We don't speak for a while. The adrenaline thins slowly. Outside the window the port lights reflect off the water in long broken lines."They didn't want the freight," Nico says. "They wanted us to know they could reach it.""Yes.""Papadis.""Almost certainly." I look at the road. "He's escalating because the Karalis terms stalled. He

Chapter 89: Yes

Nico's PovHe said yes.I stand there and process that for a moment. He said yes and his face did something I've spent the better part of two years wanting to see and it was everything I didn't let myself anticipate because anticipating things with Sasha has historically been how I hurt myself.But he said yes."You're staring," he says."I know.""Stop.""I'm going to need a minute," I say. "I just proposed to you in a kitchen at two in the morning in front of an ash bowl and you said yes and I need a minute to absorb that.""It was a reasonable time to propose.""It was not a reasonable time to propose, Sasha.""You said you meant it and not as a grand gesture. This is consistent with that.""That's a very you way to frame this.""I'm a very me person," he says.I look at him. He's standing there with his arms at his sides and the light from the hob behind him and the expression on his face that I finally know how to read, the one under the flat and the controlled and the jaw, the

Chapter 90: Two Souls

Sasha's PovThe wedding is not going to be what either of our families expect.That's the first decision we make, sitting at the kitchen table on a Tuesday morning with coffee and the Kozlov situation still unresolved and Lucy on a video call from Naples that Nico has propped against the sugar bowl. She's been talking for eleven minutes about flowers."You don't care about flowers," she says, looking at Nico."I care a moderate amount about flowers," Nico says."You don't. You care about the food and the music and whether Sasha will wear something that isn't black."I look up from the document I'm reading."I'll wear whatever is appropriate," I say.Lucy looks at me through the screen with an expression I've come to recognise as fond exasperation. "He'll wear black," she says to Nico."He'll wear very elegant black," Nico says."That's the same thing.""It really isn't." He turns back to the screen. "No flowers from the Vescari greenhouses. Papa will use it to make a statement about t

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