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I shake mine. “This is insane.”

“Possibly.”

“And I already have work.”

“You have several temporary jobs that combined pay you less in a month than I’m prepared to offer you in a week.”

My mouth closes. I don’t like how accurate that’s. “How much?”

He tells me.

I stare at him. Surely the concussion has worsened. “What?”

He repeats the number. Slowly. Clearly. As though I might have misunderstood the first time.

I have not. My stomach drops. “That’s ridiculous.”

“It is substantial.”

“It is obscene.”

“I can afford obscene.”

I look at him. He looks completely unbothered. My mind immediately starts calculating despite myself.

Rent. Student debt. Savings. A proper emergency fund.

Time to apply for jobs without spending every waking hour delivering food and tutoring children who think supply and demand is something Amazon invented.

I could breathe. For the first time in years, I could actually breathe.

And that’s exactly why the offer terrifies me.

Nikolai folds his hands loosely in front of him and watches me with those cold gray eyes.

“You don’t need to answer immediately,” he says. “But I would like you to consider coming home with us when you are discharged.”

Home with us. Not working for me. Not taking the position.

Home with us.

I look at the new phone on the bedside table. Then at him. Then toward the dark hospital window. The number he has offered keeps repeating inside my head.

And for perhaps the first time in my life, I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to say.

5

NIKOLAI

I leave Elara in the hospital room with the phone still sitting on her lap. She hasn't accepted my offer, and I have no intention of standing there while she tries to decide whether I'm serious or whether the concussion has finally done something interesting to her judgment.

Outside, Kirill is waiting near the elevators.

“Have someone bring her a change of clothes and whatever else she needs for the night,” I tell him. “Her belongings from the school, too, if they've been recovered. She shouldn't have to spend tomorrow making calls because we brought her here without her things.”

“I'll arrange it,” Kirill says. “Should I tell her you're paying the hospital bill?”

“She'll find out soon enough.”