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“Da.” The smirk arrives properly now. “You argued your way through my gate. Argued your way into every room I locked. Argued your way into my bed, my house, and every operation I told you to stay out of.” His hand squeezes mine, weak but there. “Course you argued your way into loving me too. Never expected anything less.”

I reach out and slap his arm on pure reflex, not hard, just a tap, and he pulls a sharp breath through his teeth and makes a sound that is unambiguously real pain, not theatrical. I snatch my hand back and press it to my mouth.

“I’m so sorry,” I say immediately, my voice climbing. “I forgot completely, I didn’t think, I’m sorry.”

The sound that comes out of him is low and genuine, his shoulders moving with it, his free hand pressing carefully to his side. He’s laughing.

“Volkov, stop, you’ll pull something.”

“Worth it,” he says. It settles into something quieter. His eyes come back to mine, clear and dark and entirely present. “Ya tebya lyublyu,” he says, I love you. “But you already know that, don’t you?”

Epilogue

Evelina

“You’re doing it again,” I tell him.

“Doing what?” He doesn’t look up from the report, which Marka brought this morning despite my request that he not, and which I’ve been deciding how to address for the last ten minutes while pretending to read on my side of the bed.

“Reading files when you’re supposed to be resting.”

“I’m lying down.”

“You’re lying down and issuing orders through paperwork, which isn’t the same thing and you know it.” I put my book on the nightstand. “Give me the report.”

“No.”

“Volkov.”

He looks up, and the smirk is completely intact, which is either the best possible sign or evidence that he’s been exaggerating the worst of it to get me to stop fussing. Two weeks out of surgery and the grey is gone from his face. He’s eating properly, and the wound is closing cleanly.

I get up and take the report out of his hands. He surrenders it without a fight, which tells me his side still hurts more than he’s letting on.

“One hour,” I say, setting it on the dresser. “Then Marka can have it back.”

“Forty-five minutes.”

“Fine. And you eat the lunch on that tray before it gets any colder.”

“Fine,” he says, and I still haven’t gotten used to hearing that word from him without conditions buried inside it.

I sit back down, and he picks up the fork and actually eats. I watch him for a moment before turning back to my book, but don’t read a single word of it. Outside the window, the garden is stripped bare, every leaf down, the branches showing the skyline through gaps they don’t have in summer. I’ve been watching that skyline from this window for weeks, and somewhere along the way it stopped being a measure of distance from everything I left behind. It’s just the view now.

He puts the fork down, and I hand him the water glass without turning from my page.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he says.

“You weren’t going to do it yourself.”

“I meant the security notes,” he says. “Marka told me you gave him the full list.”

I put the book down. “You were unconscious and someone needed to brief him. I had the notes.” I hold his gaze. “He was very professional about it.”

“Marka’s never professional.”

“He said thank you and only made one face, so I’m counting it.” I pull my knees up to my chest. “The hallway has four men overnight now. The east gate has a second lock, codes rotate daily, and the blind spot below the kitchen window has a fixed camera. The garden wall has two more. I also had the bathroom door rehung with a steel frame, which felt necessary.”

“Thank you,” he says.