Page 7 of Merciless Bratva Soldier

“You let a stranger put her hands on you, Nikolai.”

“She didn’t ask my permission.”

He lets that sit. Anton has known me long enough to tell which of my silences are finished and which are not.

“What do you want?” he asks.

“Someone to drive past the bakery at night. Front and back alley. A car that stays too long, someone watching the doors, any damage, I want to know about it. The building, Anton. Not her. He doesn’t follow her, he doesn’t photograph her, he doesn’t learn one thing about her life.” Because she is too perfect to drag into this world without her permission.

“Does she know?”

“Nobody knows about the fifteen minutes we spent together,” I say, “and I won’t risk her life for nobody.”

Nothing will change my mind. My head has been filled with her scent since I sat on her staff room floor and watched her cover my wound. When I close my eyes, she is all that I can see. Her thick chestnut curls refusing to stay fastened, her smile that isn’t quite symmetrical and is all the more endearing because of it, strong hands that can bake and save lives in equal measure.

In the silence, I hear Petra smoothing tape over the line in my hand.

“Grisha,” he says at last. “Ten till two. Building only, and he’ll report to you.” He inhales deeply. “Tell her, Nikolai.”

I don’t answer. I end the call and put the phone face down on the blanket. Petra finishes with the bag and leaves without a glance over her shoulder.

That night, I need Petra and the steel pole with the bag on it to reach the bathroom, and the return trip takes longer than the knife fight.

The next day, I walk the corridor using the wall for support. Twelve steps to the end. Twelve back. Yevgeny times it and says nothing, which from him is praise.

On the third morning, he discharges me to my apartment on Fulton Street with a paper bag filled with antibiotics and a list in his neat handwriting that I read twice and put in my wallet.

Everything I do now, I do in stages. Sitting takes two stages. Standing takes three. A cough is a decision. My left arm will go as high as my shoulder before the pull under the stitches tells me to stop. The first time I ignore it and reach for a glass on the top shelf, the pull turns so sharp that I lower myself to the kitchen floor before it can decide for me, and sit with my back against the cabinet, breathing through my teeth until it lets go.

Grisha texts at two each morning.

Front and alley 22:40, 01:15. No vehicles waiting. Nothing.

Same. Van on the corner 23:10, bakery supplier, gone by 23:30.

Alley clear. Back door secure. Nothing.

Exactly what I asked for: no mention of her. I read them twice in the dark anyway, and I don’t ask for more even though I want to. I close my eyes once Grisha is done and fall asleep wondering if her kisses would taste of honey too.

On the fifth day, I take a cab because Yevgeny’s list says NO DRIVING in capitals and underlined twice.

I have the driver stop at a restaurant supply store on the way. The towels come in a bundle of a dozen, white, tied with paper tape. I carry them against my right side, where they don’t press on anything.

I use the front door this time. This visit is by choice.

It’s November, and the night has made itself at home when I arrive shortly before nine. The windows of Rosa’s Bakery are lit gold from the inside and fogged everywhere but the corners. The bell over the door is louder than I expect and I feel it in the wound beneath my ribs.

A woman in her sixties is coming out as I go in. Silver in her dark hair, pinned back hard. Glasses on a cord around her neck. Flour on one cuff. She looks up at me, and up again, and doesn’t step aside, and I already know that I like her.

“We close in ten minutes,” she says.

“Then I’m just in time.”

She looks at the towels. She looks at my face, five days’ worth of stubble on my jawline, and the dark circles under my eyes. Then, without taking her eyes off me, she says, “Vera. Customer.”

I’ll take it as approval even when I remind myself that isn’t why I’m here.

She goes out into the cold. The bell rings again behind her.