Page 70 of Poison Evidence

He studied his full shot glass, saying nothing.

She could feel him withdrawing, but he wasn’t done yet. She braced herself to bear witness to more of his pain even as she nudged him to continue. “Have you been able to stay in touch with Sophia?”

He nodded. “She’d learned all the codes in the training, and we’d spent our evenings developing our own system. We’d known we’d be separated in the US and wanted to be able to keep track of each other without our handlers knowing.”

“How did you communicate?”

“The Internet is a spy’s best friend. Millions of blogs, news reports, op-eds, published weekly. Embedded within articles were coded messages. All I needed was to search for keywords to find the story and use my decoder ring to decipher the message.”

She gave him a skeptical look. “I’m calling bullshit on the decoder ring.”

He smiled in halfhearted amusement. “Close enough. The key depended on the date the story was posted among other factors. And on rare occasions, we used the dark web for more direct communication.” He sat up straight in his chair and rolled his wide shoulders. “About five years ago, during a dark web chat, she told me she’d been raped again by the same man. This time, she was pregnant.”

His gaze was far away. She imagined he saw the computer terminal where his sister’s words appeared on the screen and was flooded with the same emotions now as he’d felt then.

His eyes focused once again. “She was ecstatic when Yulian was born. She finally had family. A life. Someone tolivefor. Not just exist. Since she was sixteen, she’d been used as a tool to control me. Yulian gave her joy and purpose.” He shrugged. “Of course, Yulian gave them yet another weapon against me. His father and his conception don’t factor into my feelings for the boy. I love the little guy with all the love I have for my sister. For my parents.”

His eyes teared, and Ivy’s followed suit. He cleared his throat. “The ability to love, that’s basic humanity, but it’s also a humanneed. I’m not a sociopath. I need that connection as much as the next person, but forming friendships and relationships as Parker Reeves was impossible. Every person I met, I was betraying in one way or another. There’s only one person in my world who’s always known exactly what I am and who I’ve never betrayed. My sister. She and her son are the only people I can love, so I’ve poured everything I’ve got into them. My family.”

He bolted from the chair and paced away. He ground the palm of his hand into his cheek. “But the mere fact that I care about them has always been a threat to their very existence.”

He paced back to the table and reached for the bottle of scotch but then withdrew his hand and shook his head. Finally, he puffed out a breath. “This is harder than I thought it would be. Putting it all into words.”

“I’m sorry.” The phrase was paltry consolation. He wanted to stop spilling his heart, and she wanted nothing more than for him to continue. She rose from her seat, circled the table, and slipped her arms around his waist. She pulled him to her and pressed her cheek to his chest, holding him. She offered nothing more than comfort, something she suspected he hadn’t received since his parents were alive.

He was stiff against her for a moment, then his arms wrapped around her back and he tucked his face into her neck. A low sob escaped.

Her heart opened to his grief, and she cried with him, her tears an extension of his. They stood in the dim cave for a long time, her arms around his waist, holding him more than he held her.

Gratitude that he could accept her comfort surged inside her. That she could be his emotional conduit. Everything flowed through her, including strong emotions of her own for Dimitri. He needed to receive love as much as he needed to give it.

He lifted his head and met her gaze, unabashed by his tears. His strength in his willingness to show what some fools called weakness triggered a rush of awe.

He was the strongest man she’d ever met.

But then, it was safe to say she’d never met anyone like Dimitri Veselov. In the short time she’d known him, in spite of everything, she’d come to respect him. And now, she was shocked to realize, she trusted him too. With her life, but also—and this was where things got scary—with her heart.

She searched his gaze, taking in the pain in his eyes, and beneath it, a new calm. “Thank you,” he said. “I needed that more than you can possibly know.”

But she suspected shedidknow. He had a lifetime accumulation of needing that. Her crying jag in the wake of her marriage falling apart was nothing compared to the emotions he’d bottled up for the more than twenty years since his parents’ deaths.

He gave her a wry smile. “I’ve never even met Yulian. I’ve just seen a few photos over the years. I suppose that sounds crazy.”

“Not at all. I didn’t have to meet my sister Laurel’s daughter to love her. I loved that baby from the moment Laurel told me she was pregnant.”

He pulled her tight against him—this time, he was the one doing the primary holding—for a long squeeze. Then he pressed his lips to her neck and released her.

He stepped back and dropped his gaze to the table, but the unseeing stare was back. She could tell he wasn’t thinking about the bottle of scotch or the table. She suspected in his mind, he wasn’t in the cave at all.

“When presented with the opportunity to kill off Parker Reeves last fall, I took it. I figured Sophia and Yulian would be safe if everyone believed I was dead.” His gaze focused again, meeting hers. “Except they didn’t believe it. I told Luke Sevick I wouldn’t return to Russia. I knew he’d have to tell investigators. What I didn’t expect was someone at the GRU would get wind of it. An informant had to be privy to the investigation because there’s no way the US would share that information with Russia. I don’t know where the mole is—they could be in the FBI, CIA, DIA. Hell, it could be someone in the Coast Guard, but I’m guessing the list of those who knew the details of my conversation with Luke was damn short.”

“But someone in Russia found out, and Sophia and Yulian were back in danger,” Ivy said.

“Even worse than before. Because now I was a spy who didn’t return to the fold once his cover was blown. I was—am—a traitor on both sides. A man without a country.”

He swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple bobbed with the effort. “They were both beaten. Yulian’s arm was broken. Sophia had broken ribs and clavicle. They knew…”—he took a slow breath—“they knew she could communicate with me. Knew I wouldn’t be able to resist checking for a message from her. So she sent one, passing on clear instructions: report in to receive new orders, or Yulian would lose a finger. One per day. On the eleventh day, they’d start on hers. And on the twenty-first day, they’d both be shot.”

She wanted to hold him again but could tell he wanted physical space, so she stepped away, to fight the urge.

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