She didn't wipe it off.
I stand in the shower in the guest bathroom, the one she's never been inside because I took her to my room, and I watch pink water spiral down the drain and I think about that. About the fact that I kissed her forehead with a dead man's blood splattered on my mouth and she let it stay.
The hot water hits the split on my knuckles and I flex my hand. The second man, the one who got close enough to make it personal, I broke his jaw with my right hand before I put a round through his temple. The third went down clean, two in the chest from across the kitchen island, but the first one, the one by the front door, he was the problem. He had a suppressor and he almost got a shot off before Ilya's men intercepted the stairwell team. Almost. The difference between almost and actually isabout three inches and a reflex I've been training since I was fourteen years old.
Three inches from a bullet finding Wren through the bathroom wall.
I turn the water hotter and stand under it until my skin is red from heat instead of blood.
Ilya calls while I'm getting dressed.
"The apartment is clear. My team has the bodies. Cleanup crew is on-site."
"The Rothko."
"What?"
"There's a bullet hole in the Rothko. Above the fireplace. Have it repaired or replaced with something else. I don't want her seeing it."
A pause. "You're worried about the painting."
"I'm worried about every visual reminder in that apartment that three men came to kill me while she was in the next room. The painting. The blood on the floor. The dent in the kitchen island where Petrov's skull hit the sink. All of it. Gone by tonight."
"Dominik, we need to talk about who sent them."
"Kir."
"Obviously Kir. But the fact that he knows where you live, that he found the service entrance, that he had the codes for the lower levels. That means he has someone inside our--"
"I know what it means."
Silence.
"Handle the leak," I say. "Find out who sold the access codes and bring them to the warehouse on Atlantic. I'll deal with them after I deal with her."
"After you deal with her," Ilya repeats, and his voice carries the particular brand of exhaustion that I've been hearing from him a lot lately. The exhaustion of a man who has watched his best friend rearrange an entire criminal empire around a woman he's known for eight days.
"Ilya."
"What."
"She reached for my hand tonight. In the hallway. Before the attack. She reached for my hand and then pulled back."
Silence. Then: "And?"
"And I need you to understand that what happened tonight, the breach, the bodies, the three inches between a bullet and the bathroom wall, that cannot happen again. I don't care what it costs. I don't care how many men you need to hire. I don't care if you have to put a sniper on every rooftop between here and the East River. I will burn this city to the foundation before I let anyone take her from me."
"You're talking about one woman."
"I'm talking about the only woman that matters."
He hangs up and I button my shirt. I look at myself in the mirror, and the man looking back is clean and sharp and wearing a face that gives away nothing, and underneath that face is something feral and absolute that I stopped trying to control about six days ago.
I go back to my room. The room I gave her when I first brought her back from the auction.
She's sitting on the bed in my cashmere sweater with her hair tucked behind her ears and her hands wrapped around her knees. She's stopped shaking but she hasn't stopped being pale, and her eyes track me as I walk to the chair in the corner and sit down.
I don't stand over her. I don't loom. The chair puts us at eye level and I give her the geometry of equals, because what I'm about to say requires her to believe that she's being spoken to, not spoken at.