Chapter 83 Marlena
Morning came with grey light through the windows and Elena making small sounds in her crib that meant she was awake and would start crying if I didn't get her soon.
I picked her up and changed her and carried her downstairs, and Nikolai was already in the kitchen standing at the counter staring at nothing, which meant he hadn't slept.
I could see it in the way he held himself, that particular tiredness that came from staying awake all night thinking in circles, and I felt a small twist of something that might have been guilt but I pushed it down because I wasn't ready to feel guilty yet.
I made coffee without saying anything, the routine familiar enough that my hands knew what to do without my brain having to direct them, and when I poured two cups I slid one across the counter toward where Nikolai stood.
He looked at it and then at me.
"Thank you," he said quietly.
I nodded and took my cup to the table and sat down with Elena in my lap, and she immediately started grabbing for the spoon I'd left there from last night, so I gave it to her and watched her bang it against the table with focused determination.
The sound was loud in the quiet kitchen, metal on wood over and over, and it made me want to smile despite everything because she was so serious about it, so completely absorbed in the task of making noise.
I looked up and caught Nikolai watching her too, and something in his face had softened just slightly, the way it always did when he looked at our daughter, and our eyes met for a second before we both looked away.
Animals and babies were good at making people stop being cold to each other, at forcing small moments of connection even when everything else was broken, and I was grateful for it even if it didn't fix anything.
I drank my coffee and let Elena bang her spoon and felt the awkwardness settle over the kitchen like fog, thick and uncomfortable but not quite unbearable.
Nikolai brought his coffee to the table and sat down across from me, careful to leave space between us, and we sat there in silence except for Elena's spoon for long enough that I started to wonder if we were just going to exist like this now, careful and distant and barely speaking.
Then I made myself say what I'd been thinking about all night in that narrow bed upstairs.
"I need to know everything from now on," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt, "not summaries or the version you think I can handle or information filtered through what you've decided is safe for me to know, I mean everything."
Nikolai set down his coffee cup and looked at me directly.
"Yes," he said.
"I mean it," I said, because yes was too easy, yes was what people said when they wanted to end a conversation, "I mean every piece of information that affects our safety or our future or decisions we need to make, I want to know it when you know it, not weeks or months later when you've decided how to tell me."
"I know what you mean," he said, and his voice was serious and level, "and I'm saying yes, I will tell you everything from now on, no more secrets, no more deciding what you can handle."
I studied his face looking for signs that he was just saying what I wanted to hear, but all I saw was exhaustion and something that looked like genuine commitment.
"Okay," I said.
We sat with that for a moment while Elena discovered she could bang the spoon on her own leg and started doing that instead, and I watched her and thought about how trust had to be rebuilt in pieces, one promise at a time, one decision at a time, until eventually the foundation was solid again.
"I've been thinking about the ledger," I said, shifting Elena to my other knee when she started to squirm.
"So have I," Nikolai said.
"It should go to someone we trust completely," I said, "not Damien or MI6 or anyone connected to intelligence agencies, because they'll just use it for their own purposes and we'll still be vulnerable."
Nikolai nodded slowly, listening.
"There's a journalist I knew from my time in Paris," I continued, "a woman named Celeste Renard, she worked for Le Monde and spent years trying to expose European political corruption, she's published stories about arms dealing and money laundering and corrupt officials, and she has resources to verify information and protect sources."
I watched Nikolai's face while I talked, waiting for him to immediately say no or point out all the reasons it was a bad idea, but he just sat there thinking, his fingers wrapped around his coffee cup.
"You trust her?" he asked finally.
"I did," I said, "we weren't close friends but I knew her through the art world, she came to gallery openings looking for stories about money laundering through art sales, and she always struck me as someone who actually cared about truth instead of just getting headlines."
"When was the last time you spoke to her?" Nikolai asked.
"Three years ago," I admitted, "maybe four, but I know she's still at Le Monde because I saw her byline on an article last year about French defense contracts."
Nikolai was quiet for a long moment, still thinking, and I let him think instead of pushing because this was how he processed things, by turning them over from every angle until he'd examined all the possibilities.
"If we give it to her," he said slowly, "we lose control of how it gets used, she could publish everything immediately or she could sit on it, she could protect us as sources or she could expose us, we'd be trusting her completely with something that could get us killed."
"I know," I said.
"And once it's public we can't take it back," he continued, "every person named in that ledger will know we exposed them, will know we're responsible for destroying their careers and possibly sending them to prison, we'll have enemies in governments across Europe."
"I know that too," I said.
"But Dorian won't have a reason to chase us anymore," Nikolai said, and I could see him working through the logic, "the ledger would be worthless to him once it's published, the leverage would be gone."
"Exactly," I said.
Elena threw her spoon on the floor and started fussing, and I bent down to pick it up and wiped it on my shirt before giving it back to her.
"I need to think about it," Nikolai said.
"Okay," I said, and I meant it, I wasn't trying to force a decision, just putting the option on the table so we could consider it together.
He looked at me and something in his expression shifted, became less guarded.
"Thank you for telling me your idea instead of just doing it," he said, "for including me in the decision."
"That's how it's supposed to work," I said, "we decide things together, we trust each other with information, we stop trying to protect each other by keeping secrets."
"I'm going to be bad at it sometimes," he said quietly, "the instinct to control information is really deeply embedded, I'm going to slip up and keep things from you without meaning to."
"Probably," I agreed, "and when you do I'll be angry and we'll fight about it and then we'll figure out how to do better next time."
He almost smiled at that, just a small movement at the corner of his mouth.
"That sounds exhausting," he said.
"It is," I said, "but it's better than the alternative."
Elena banged her spoon on the table again and made a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been indigestion, and we both looked at her and this time we did smile, small and careful but real.
It was the first normal conversation we'd had in twenty-four hours, the first time we'd talked about something important without it turning into a fight or a shut down, and it felt like breathing again after holding my breath underwater.
It didn't fix everything and I was still hurt and he was still guilty and we still had a lot to work through, but it was something, a small step in the direction of being okay again.
He says he needs to think about it. She says okay. It is the first normal conversation they have had in 24 hours and it feels like breathing again.
Word count: 1,200