He doesn’t need to. The footage is still running in a silent loop between us, my sister disappearing into the arms of Mikhail Voronin.
I drag a hand over my mouth and feel my temper starting to come up from somewhere cold and deep.
“Bring her here.”
Yuri nods once and steps out.
I don’t sit. I stay where I am, one hand braced on the desk, staring at the last still frame on the monitor. My mind is moving too fast and not fast enough at the same time. The image keeps breaking apart and reforming inside it. By the time the dooropens again, shock has burned through and left something much worse behind.
Anna walks in on her own. Yuri closes the door behind her and stays by it.
She looks from me to the monitor and knows immediately.
Not what I suspect. What I know.
I ask, “How long?”
She closes her eyes for one brief second. “Viktor?—”
“How long?”
Her gaze comes back to mine. “Almost a year.”
A year of dinners, calls, ordinary family conversations. A year of her standing in front of me and saying nothing while she gave herself to the one man I have spent years keeping at a distance from everything that matters to me.
I laugh once, but there is no humor in it. “You’ve been seeing Voronin for a year.”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of it is almost insulting. I look at my sister and feel betrayal settle properly now, heavy and unmistakable.
“You’re in love with him.”
Her face changes then. Not much. Enough.
“Yes,” she says quietly.
There it is. Not strategy. Not convenience. Not one stupid mistake. Something deeper and, in some ways, even harder to forgive.
I turn away from her because if I keep looking at her right then, I’m going to say something I won’t take back.
Behind me, she says, “We didn’t do this to you.”
I turn back immediately. “What?”
Her voice is steadier now, as if this part is what she came prepared to say. “Mikhail didn’t orchestrate the shooting.”
I hold her gaze and say nothing.
“But he does know something.”
“What?” I ask
“He was approached,” she says. “Someone wanted him to arrange it.”
That gets my attention, though not in the way she wants.
“Arrange what?”