“Your kind always does.”
I snatched my laptop and phone and bolted for the door.
The hallway had dissolved into motion—doors flung open, voices overlapping, the alarm drilling straight through my skull. I plunged into it without looking back. Someone shouted.Someone laughed, brittle and high. I didn’t smell smoke or burning, but the alarm blared on.
I kept moving.
The stairwell door slammed behind me, metal cracking against metal. The sound alone loosened something in my chest.
People funneled downward in neat lines, coats clutched, phones glowing, faces more annoyed than afraid. No one looked at me. No one knew.
I folded myself into the stream and let it carry me, shoulder brushing shoulder, the press of bodies a thin, blessed shield.
My legs shook, but they held. Each step jarred my spine. I counted them without meaning to—one, two, three—until the rhythm steadied my breathing. Somewhere below, sirens wailed, rising and falling, the sound of authority and consequence. I focused on that. On the solid rail under my palm. On the fact that Richard wasn’t behind me. Not here. Not now.
By the time I reached the lobby, my hands were numb. I drifted toward the glass doors with the others, blinking against the daylight and the rush of cold air. A security guard waved us on, calm and procedural.
Outside, the crowd spilled across the pavement in loose knots—chattering, irritated, alive.
Safe.
My breath shuddered out of me, ragged and uneven.
I lifted my head, scanning the pavement through the blur in my eyes.
And there he was.
Luka stood near the curb, coat unbuttoned, hands fisted at his sides. His face was utterly still—like stone.
His eyes found mine. And something in them cracked. “Thank God.”
He tugged open the passenger door.
“Get in the car.”
chapter
nineteen
Luka set a glass of vodka on the coffee table in front of me, the bottle uncapped beside it, as if he anticipated refills.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
He didn’t speak. He crouched in front of me, steadied my hands around the glass, and guided it to my lips. The vodka was so cold it burned, antiseptic and sharp.
Blink. Swallow. Breathe.
I waited for the old Alex—the one who could always manage a joke—to crack some quip about the classic Slavic approach to problem-solving: vodka. But my thoughts were static, my voice gone. What came out instead was a scraped whisper.
“Thank you.”
He nodded once and dropped onto the floor at my feet, knees bent, elbows braced on his thighs—patient. Waiting. He watched me drink, the cut of his eyes refusing to let me look away.
A series of staccato buzzes shattered the quiet. Luka shifted and pulled his phone from his back pocket. He scanned the screen, eyes narrowed, then handed it to me.
“The office is calling you.”
I nearly dropped my drink. He caught my wrist and eased the glass to the table.