Page 141 of Filthy Lies

We spend the morning in cold dissection of our options, two surgeons operating on the corpse of our lives. Vince paces while I sit rigid in a chair, neither too close nor too far.

“What if we give Carver something else?” I suggest. “Information on the Solovyovs that’s better than what they already have. Something that makes turning you seem unnecessary.”

“They want me in their pocket. A Bratvapakhanas their personal lapdog.” He stops, running a hand through his hair. “Even if we redirected them now, they’d just come back later with something worse.”

“Then we need leverage. Something on Carver himself.”

Vince’s eyes meet mine, a glint of reluctant admiration cutting through the frost. “Now, you’re thinking like an Akopov.”

“Don’t,” I snap. “Don’t fucking romanticize what you’ve turned me into.”

The strategy session continues, one hour bleeding into the next. We dance around each other in this choreography of caution, never getting too close, never touching. The walls of his office seem to shrink. I’m finding it harder and harder to breathe.

By evening, we’ve formed a tentative plan—a dangerous game of partial cooperation and misdirection. Give Carver enough to satisfy him without compromising everything. Without betraying my father.

“It could work,” Vince says uncertainly. It’s the first note of hope in his voice since I returned.

“Or it could get you killed.”

The possibility slices through me with unexpected sharpness. Despite everything, the thought of Vince dead makes me physically ill.

I stand abruptly. “I need space. We’ll finish this later.”

He simply nods.

We retreat to opposite ends of the house. I spend time with Sofiya, desperate for her innocent warmth after a day that left me feeling like I need to scrub myself raw in a hellfire-hot shower. Vince works the phones, doing fuck knows what.

We eat dinner separately. We exist in parallel, two phantoms haunting the same house.

Night falls. I put Sofiya to bed, singing her the usual lullabies even though my voice is tear-stained and ready to falter. She falls asleep clutching a stuffed animal, one that Vince gave her. I want to take it away because it has his fingerprints all over it.

But even in my anger, I can’t bear to separate her from that small piece of him.

I rise and exit. I’m halfway to my—our—bedroom when the piercing wail of Sofiya’s cry slices through the silence. I turn back around instantly, maternal instinct overriding everything else, and run to her.

I round the corner…

… and collide hard with Vince in the hallway.

His body feels like a wall of warm granite against mine. My hands instinctively brace against his chest, feeling his heart thundering beneath my fingertips. He grips my upper arms tosteady me, and the sudden, electric contact after days of nothing makes my breath catch painfully.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

He doesn’t let go.

I should push away. I should step back. I should remember every betrayal, every lie, every moment he chose control over honesty.

But his hands are burning through the thin fabric of my shirt, and my treacherous body remembers every single place those hands have touched, every single way they’ve ever made me come apart.

His eyes are blue in the dark. They don’t blink or waver. They just watch. They just wait.

Sofiya’s cries grow more insistent, breaking the spell. We both move toward her door, still too close, still brushing against each other in the narrow hallway.

“Mama!” Sofiya sobs when we enter, her little face red and tear-streaked. “Papa!”

Vince reaches her first, lifting her from the crib with such naked tenderness that I have to look away. It hurts too much to see him be kind.

“Nightmare,solnishka?” he murmurs, pressing his lips to her forehead and humming under his breath.

---