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He doesn’t take anything with him when he leaves. I lock the door, check it, and check it again.

I sit on his floor with my back against the locked door, the folded default notice on my knee, and sob into my hands.

14

NIKOLAI

At twenty to four I knock on my own door with a folder in my hand. I’ve been up all night in the empty unit below, at a card table Anton’s men left behind, putting papers in order.

The lock turns. She opens the door as far as the chain allows, dressed for work in black trousers, gray sweater, her hair already knotted. I ache to kiss the dark circles beneath her eyes and make them go away, but I need to earn her trust back first.

I hold up the folder. “This is everything. I’ll tell you what’s in it, and then I’ll go.”

She closes the door, slides the chain, and opens it again. She doesn’t step back to let me in, and it takes every ounce of my willpower to stay on the mat and not cup her face in my hands.

“Grisha’s reports,” I say. “Times, dates, what he saw outside the bakery and his handwritten account of the diner. Anton’s file on Daniel’s debt. Who holds the paperwork, where he works, the notice sent to Daniel before the final one that you have.”

She takes it and opens it to Grisha’s pages.

His neat handwriting slants uphill. Back booth by the kitchen. Saw two pictures on Reed’s phone. Bakery front, lights on. N going in the door. I can’t say what was on the others. Her mouth tightens and stays that way.

“He’s been driving past the whole time?”

“You trusted me, and I shouldn’t have kept anything back,” I say. “I thought silence would keep you safe. I was wrong about what it would cost us.”

Her eyes grow large with tears, and she sucks on her top lip to hold them in.

“In my line of work, I trust my instincts every minute of every day.” I drag my eyes away from her mouth. “But loving you means I can’t make every choice for you. I should have told you.”

“And now?” she whispers.

“And now… I wish I could turn the clock back and tell you everything because without you in my life… There is nothing.”

She blinks, tears collecting on her lashes, and I fist my hands to stop myself from reaching out and touching them.

There’s still one more thing she doesn’t know.

“The morning after I showed you that photograph, I went to the man I work for. Anton was on the phone. I told them everything that’s in the folder and I put the photograph of you on his desk.” I keep my eyes on hers. “I told them before I told you.”

She looks down at the folder, closes it, and holds it against her chest with both arms.

“I’m not going to tell you what I think about that,” she says. “Not today. Maybe not tomorrow.”

“Vera…”

“Rosa needs to see this,” she says. “I’ll give it to her myself and if she wants to talk to you, she can.”

I nod once and step back from the door. I wait to hear the chain go on before I go downstairs to the empty unit.

Ten minutes later, I watch Grisha’s car pull out with her in the passenger seat and the folder on her knee.

Rosa calls later that afternoon.

“Come to the shop at nine, after we close. Don’t bring anything.”

“I’ll be there.”

She hangs up.