جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 70

Kane's POVHe was on the phone before six.The first call was to the contact who'd flagged his father's man the night before — a brief conversation, specific questions, specific answers. The man had been seen in three locations since landing. Financial district, a restaurant Kane's name was loosely connected to through a business partner, and a hotel two miles from the house. Not close enough to be at the door yet. Close enough to matter.Kane ended the call and made another.Then another.By eight he had a clearer picture and didn't like any of it. His father's man — whose name was Soren, whose reputation Kane knew without ever having dealt with him directly — was thorough in the particular way that came from having done this for a long time and never having been wrong enough to slow down. He didn't make noise. He asked quiet questions of quiet people and assembled the answers into something complete before anyone realized he'd been asking.Kane had maybe thirty hours left. Possibly

Nadia's POV The silence was worse than the noise.During the shooting I had something to do with the fear — I could press myself against the wall, I could count the sounds, I could track the movement of footsteps through the ceiling above me and tell myself that as long as I could still hear his men moving it meant things were still being handled. Fear with something to listen to was manageable. Fear with nothing was just fear.When the gunfire stopped I waited. One minute, then two, then five, and the silence stretched and filled with smaller sounds — distant voices, something heavy being moved, a door opening somewhere on the ground floor — and I stood with my hand on the door handle and told myself to wait, he said wait, he said don't open it for anyone except me or Lev and I was going to do exactly that.I lasted eight minutes.Then I opened the door.The corridor outside was empty and dim and smelled like something that made my stomach turn, and I stepped out carefully and looke

Nadia's POVGetting Kane back to the room was easier than getting him to stay in it.He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the phone on the bedside table and I moved it before he could reach for it, which earned me a look that would have been more effective if he hadn't been holding his side with both hands."That's mine," he said."I know." I put it on the table across the room. "You can have it back when you're lying down."He looked at the table across the room. Then at me. "Nadia.""Kane."He held my gaze for a moment, then looked at the ceiling like it had done something to offend him, and I pulled the chair close to the bed and sat and looked at the bandaging the doctor had done. Clean, well applied, but he'd been walking around on it which wasn't what it needed."Lie back," I said."I'm fine sitting.""You were holding a wall ten minutes ago.""That was ten minutes ago."I looked at him. He looked back with the specific expression he used when he'd decided something and w

Kane's POVHis father arrived at seven forty-three.Kane was in the study when Lev appeared in the doorway. "He's here.""Send him in."He stayed standing behind the desk, one hand pressed briefly against his side before he removed it. The door opened and his father walked in and didn't look at Kane immediately — just looked around the study, at the boarded window visible through the corridor, at the state of the walls, at the evidence of last night laid out like a verdict. Then he looked at Kane.He didn't greet him.He crossed the room and sat in the chair across the desk with the expression of someone who had arrived somewhere that had confirmed exactly what they'd expected to find, and the disgust in it wasn't loud or performed — it was the quiet settled kind, the kind that had been sitting there for a while and had finally found a face to wear.Kane looked back at him and waited."I warned you," his father said. His voice was level and cold in equal measure. "I told you what woul

Nadia's POVThe drive back took longer than the drive out, partly because Lev took a different route and partly because I kept asking him to slow down near certain streets.The city looked different in the early evening — the light doing something warm and golden to everything it touched, the buildings casting long shadows across roads that were starting to quiet down from the day. I had my phone out before I'd consciously decided to, taking pictures through the window the way I used to do when I was in school and had nowhere important to be and the whole city felt like something that belonged to me.A street market packing up for the evening. An old building with peeling paint and a bright green door that looked like it had been there since before anyone currently alive could remember. Two boys sitting on a wall sharing something between them, not talking, just existing. I photographed all of it.Lev glanced at me once in the mirror and said nothing, which was its own kind of permiss