No Mercy for Pakhan

ore she consciously registered the sound, and some animal part of her already knew who sto

d enough, but through some denser gravity that bent the air around him. Five years had carved his face leaner, sharper at the jaw, a thin white scar now tracing one eyebrow

ed that had always frightened her more than shouting ever could. "You can do it yourself

ing up hot and fast. But Alexei was asleep in the back bedroom, and there was no version of this morning where she left him behind,

ened t

old scent she had once found comforting and now found suffocating. She caught herself cataloguing the changes in him the way she used to, an old habit reasserting itself before she could stop it.

◆

his gaze even though every nerve in her body screamed to look away, because l

was something underneath the flat courtesy

ge, one hand braced against the doorframe as though that alone could hold the door, a

though every space belonged to him until proven otherwise. "I want to know why there was a ring on my kitchen counter and nothing else. And I want to know," he

had spent five years constructing collapsing in a

g now, the control fraying at its edges for the first time. "And then I looked at that photograph for an hou

itr

is gaze, close enough that she could feel the heat coming off him like something combustible. "Of every sin you might have committed against me in the

xact moment, with the worst possible timing that fate had ever arranged, that a bedroom door

Who's

◆

e a car crash, and Elena watched, helpless, as Dmitri turned toward the sound of that small voice with an expression

d Dmitri's exact eyes, the same deep, unusual shade of brown-black that Elena had spent four years quietly mourning every time her son loo

ady looking past her, curious and unbothered by strangers the way small children were before the

h the particular directness of a four year old who had not

ismic calculation, and when he finally crouched down to bring himself level with the boy, his v

tri," he said.

en said their own names, as though it were the

oy's head, his eyes were no longer merely dark. They were something closer to a held breath before a storm b

le word, because they both knew, standing in that small sunlit living room with her son between them, exactly wha

r voice she did not feel, "go get dressed for me,

ment his bedroom door clicked shut, Dmitri rose slowly to his full height and turned on Ele

itri said. It wa

ill them and made herself meet his eyes, because whatever came next, she w

almost like wonder move across Dmitri's face in rapid succession before he managed to lock it all back down behind the composed mask he wore for the rest of

ection, in a world that would have devoured either of you the second anyone with a grudge against me lea

urdling fast into old anger, five years of carefully buried resentment surging up all

y, an old unanswered question resurfacing exactly where she had left it five years ago. He did not address it. Instead he straightened his cuff

re not staying in this apartment another night, not with Petrov's men already circling, a

e conviction they carried, because she had seen the black sedan outside Ruth's building last night, and she k