I reach out and pat her hand. It’s way too familiar for someone I just met, but it feels natural, so I just roll with it. “This is not your fault, Polly. None of it is.”
Her eyes focus on me. They really are the most striking pair of hazel eyes I’ve seen in a while. “You don’t want to stay down here, do you?”
“No. It’s hard to believe there’s a threat when you can’t see it. Sometimes, I think your brother’s asking too much of me to trust him implicitly.”
“He can be a real hardass.” She looks around uncomfortably. “It must suck to be down here all the time.” Her eyes find mine again and she adds, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. None of this is your fault.”
“It’s just… It feels wrong to keep you down here. Why don’t you come back upstairs with me?”
My first thought is, Where’ve you been all my life?
My second is, Uri will lose his shit.
My third thought is, Awesome.
But I don’t want Polly to get caught in the crossfire. “Your brother wouldn’t be happy about that,” I say sadly. “You’re not supposed to know about me at all. He’ll get angry and Lev will get agitated and it’ll be a mess.”
Polly frowns. “Let me talk to Uri.”
“Please don’t. The moment you talk to him, he’s gonna stop you and Lev from coming down here, too. In any case, the two of us are… We’re not really on speaking terms at the moment.”
She squints at me suspiciously. “Is there anything else I should know about?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
“I mean… is there something going on between the two of you? Like… romantically?”
I almost snort at her choice of words, though I manage to hold in my reaction at the last second. “There is nothing going on between us. He’s made it very clear that I’m nothing more than his hostage. In the nicest sense of the word.”
“Fucking hell,” Polly breathes.
I smile. “You swear like your brother.”
“Where do you think I learned it from?”
I can see it on her face: she’s a good kid, a principled one. Which is probably why seeing me down here is so hard for her to process. But she also loves Uri. Which is another reason this is hard for her to process.
She and Lev—they’re both just children.
“Listen to me: this is not your battle to fight, okay?”
Her nose wrinkles up. “What kind of person would I be if I just left you down here? I mean, they’re gonna revoke my feminist card.”
I smile as I put my hand over hers. “How about this? If I ever need help, I’ll ask.”
She arches her eyebrows. “Yeah?”
I nod. “Pinky swear.”
52
URI
Nikolai is waiting for me by the front door when I walk in. Judging from the harrowed look on his face, he’s attempted to spend some time with Lev.
“What happened?”
He bristles defensively. “What makes you think something happened?”
“Your shirt is wet and you have a constipated look on your face.”
Nikolai rolls his eyes. “I tried to get Lev to come swim with me. He took the suggestion personally.”
“Lev doesn’t swim. You know that.”
“We need to push him a little more. If he can step outside his comfort zone, then maybe—”
“Maybe what?” I demand. “He can be normal? He can be like any other twenty-two-year-old?”
Nikolai holds up his hands. “You know what? Never mind. What happened with the surveillance run today?”
I swallow my irritation and take the pivot. “Stepan and I caught Boris leaving his hotel in an armored truck with a full team. He went from there to Midtown and that’s where we lost him. He’s clearly scared.”
“And prepared.”
“He’s just delaying the inevitable. That’s all it is.”
Nikolai nods. “I might actually have an idea for how we can bring forward the inevitable.”
“Do tell,” I say, chucking my keys onto the foyer table.
“The little kiska in the basement.”
I freeze. “What?”
Nikolai’s watching me a little too carefully for my liking. There’s a glimmer in his eye that he only ever gets when he feels like he’s about to be proven right.
“She’s been noticed, brother. Something you should have expected when you decided to parade her all over the city. I’ve got it on good authority that Sobakin is planning on targeting Alyssa now. Clearly, he thinks she means something to you.”
“She doesn’t.” The words fly out of my mouth without hesitation.
“Then you won’t have a problem using her to draw him out.”
I have to try very hard to control my expression. “You want to use her as bait?”
“You have to admit, it’s a good strategy. The moment we dangle her in front of him, he’s going to pounce—” The very thought is making my hands clench into fists. “—and that’s when we trap him.” Fuck. “What do you think?”
“There are risks.”
“Every single plan we come up with will have a risk. At least this one has a high probability of succeeding.” Nikolai’s glare becomes more pointed. “Unless you’re trying to tell me you care about the—”
“It’ll work.”
Nikolai’s mouth snaps shut. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I smack him on the back on my way into the house. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a long day.”
The moment I slam the door on him, I let my facade of indifference fall. Putting Alyssa directly in Sobakin’s path feels counterproductive. It feels wrong. It feels… unnatural.
But not doing it… what would that mean?
“Penny for your thoughts?”
I glance to the side as Polina appears from the corridor. I push myself off the door. “When you were little you used to go around saying, ‘Polly for your thoughts.’ Do you remember that?”
She cringes. “I was, like, three.”
“How old are you now? Four? Five?”
Flashing me a middle finger and a matching scowl, she asks, “Want some dinner? We made blinis.”
“‘We’?” My heartbeat quickens. Surely she doesn’t mean—
“Mariska and me. Not Lev. He still hates me.”
“He does not hate you,” I sigh with a sigh.
She pshaws as if it doesn’t matter one way or the other, though I know it hurts her that he doesn’t reciprocate her love as openly as she’d like. “Whatever. Do you want food or not?”
It’s not like Pol to be so short with me. The girl’s got an abundant reserve of patience. She reminds me of Alyssa that way.
No. Stop it. Stop thinking of Alyssa, goddammit.
“I’ll take a blini.”
She walks me to the kitchen and starts preparing a plate for me. It’s clear that she’s preoccupied, though. Her usual smile is gone and her eyebrows seem permanently glued together.
“Is there something bothering you?”
“I don’t know. Should there be something bothering me?”
I lean a hip against the counter and fold my arms over my chest. “Polina, is there something you’d like to say to me?”
“Is there something you’d like to say to me?”