Page 91 of Carved in Ruin

The numbers on the screen blur. I rub my temple, the dull throb in my skull threatening to split open. Work usually keeps me steady—anchored—but tonight, it’s failing me.

There’s a knock on my door and I don’t bother looking up. “Come in.”

Arkadi steps in, his presence immediately uneasy, like he knows he’s walking into the lion’s den.

“Pour us a glass of whiskey and show me the report,” I say.

“Yes, Pakhan,” Arkadi replies, moving quickly to the sideboard. But there’s something off in the way his hands linger on the glasses, how his shoulders stiffen as he pours. He sets my glass in front of me, careful not to spill a drop, before handing over the report.

I flip it open, scanning the pages. The first picture is of her leaving the penthouse, coat draped over her slender frame, herhead tilted down like she’s trying to stay invisible. Invisible? Not to me. Never to me.

The next picture is her in the lab. She’s hunched over a desk with her hair tied back in that way that makes my palms itch to pull it loose. She’s focused, completely absorbed in whatever she is doing. My stomach twists. Is she eating? Sleeping?

“Pakhan…” Arkadi’s voice breaks through my thoughts and I glance up.

“What’s wrong?” I growl, narrowing my eyes. “Why are you looking at me like I’m going to murder you?”

Arkadi hesitates, his hand hovering near his own glass. “Next page,” he mutters.

I flip it over.

The pub.

The cheap, grimy excuse for a pub in a part of town so low she shouldn’t even know it exists. My hand tightens around the edge of the report, the paper threatening to tear. She’s sitting there, her colleagues around her, a drink in her hand. The lighting is shit, the air probably stinks of spilled beer and desperation. She doesn’t belong there.

But it’s the next shot that makes my blood run cold.

Her, getting into a cab, with the man she was sitting next to.

The glass in my hand snaps before I realize I’ve crushed it, shards biting into my palm. Whiskey drips onto the floor, pooling with the blood that beads on my skin.

Arkadi flinches but he doesn’t speak.

I flip another page, my breathing loud in the quiet room.

Her. Leading him into the penthouse.

My vision darkens with rage, my chest heaving like a storm has cracked open inside me.

“No more pages?” I ask, my voice deceptively calm.

Arkadi shakes his head. “That’s it, Pakhan.”

I slam the report down, the desk rattling under the force. “Why is he at her apartment? Where the fuck are the photos of him going home?”

Arkadi pales, his throat bobbing as he swallows hard. “He…he didn’t go home.”

The desk flips before I even register moving. Papers scatter, whiskey spills, and Arkadi scrambles to back away from the wreckage.

“Didn’t go home?” I hiss. “I told her. I fucking told her. No. Other. Men.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s done,” I murmur, more to myself than to Arkadi. “She doesn’t understand. She thinks she can bring some stranger into what’s mine?”

“Pakhan…” Arkadi ventures.

“How long?” I demand, cutting him off. My hands curl into fists, blood dripping from the cuts I barely notice.

Arkadi hesitates, and I step toward him, towering over him, daring him to make me wait another second.

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