YELENA
I shouldn’t have called him.
The thought slammed into my head the second the screen went dark. The second her face replaced his. The second I realized my hands were shaking and my heart was doing something stupid and painful inside my chest.
Why would I listen to that foolish instinct? That tiny voice that whispered to call him, just once. I should have ignored it the way I had learned to ignore him. I should have closed my eyes, buried myself in work, and pretended he didn’t exist.
I had done it before.
So why now?
I rubbed my face hard, dragging my palms down like I could wipe the feeling away. He had helped me. Yes. He had tried. He was trying to protect me, to fix the danger hovering around my life like a bad omen. I knew that. I wasn’t blind to it.
But help didn’t mean
