Page 73 of Belong to Me
Too clean. The phrase had nagged at him for two weeks, and this morning, after Kotov's call, the nagging had gone silent. Because if the chain had moved on, then Morgan's cleanliness was just cleanliness, and Alexei's instincts about the man were nothing more than jealousy wearing the mask of strategy.
He left the bag on the desk. He'd dispose of the files when they got home. Burn them, probably. There was no reason to keep the evidence of a threat that no longer existed.
Mia was in the kitchen. She'd found the French press and was performing her usual act of violence on the coffee, and Biscuit was on the floor beside the wood stove, a position he'd claimed within seconds of walking in and clearly considered his permanent territory.
"This cabin," she told him without turning around, "is the most un-Alexei place I've ever seen."
"It was my father's."
She turned. Her expression changed. The teasing dropped away, replaced by the close attention she gave him whenever Daniil'sname surfaced, which was rarely, because Alexei didn't talk about his father, and the not-talking was its own kind of wall that she'd learned to stand beside rather than push against.
"Your father built this?"
"He bought the land. Built the frame with Andrei and a contractor from the village. I was twelve. Artem was eight. Anton kept trying to use the hammer and hitting his own thumb."
She smiled. Not the bright, full smile. The softer one. The one she saved for the moments when the man underneath the empire was visible.
"I love it here," she said.
Two words that had nothing to do with the cabin.
He crossed the kitchen. Took the French press from her. Set it on the counter. Her eyebrows went up.
"I was using that."
"You were destroying it."
"I was making coffee."
"You were making warm milk with a French press as a witness."
She laughed. The sound filled the small kitchen the way it filled every room she entered, and the cabin absorbed it, the timber walls and the stone floor and the low ceiling holding the warmth of her voice the way a cupped hand holds water.
He was going to tell her. Right now. In this kitchen, in this cabin his father built, with the fire burning low and Biscuit on the floor and the mountains outside and the chain broken and the secretdissolved and nothing left between them but the three words he'd never spoken to anyone.
He opened his mouth.
"Alexei."
Not her voice. Her voice was in front of him, warm and laughing. This voice came from behind him, and it wasn't a voice at all. It was a sound. Biscuit, lifting his head from the floor, a low rumble in his throat that wasn't a growl but was adjacent to one. The sound the dog made when something in the house was wrong.
Mia frowned. "What's his problem?"
"Stay here."
The words came out clipped. Automatic. The twenty-two-year machine engaging before his conscious mind caught up. He was already moving, already crossing the kitchen toward the back room, toward the study, toward the desk where the bag was, and the bag was open.
He'd left it closed.
He stopped in the doorway.
Mia was standing at the desk.
Not the Mia from the kitchen. The kitchen Mia was behind him, her footsteps following his despite his instruction to stay, because Mia Robertson did not stay when she was told to stay, she followed, she pushed, she walked through every door he failed to lock.
But this was wrong. She couldn't be in two places. He blinked. The kitchen Mia was behind him. The study was empty. The bagwas on the desk. Open. The files spilling out across the surface, because the bag had fallen on its side, and the photos were visible, and—
"Alexei, what is this?"
