Standing behind the sofa, Evette grimaced and aimed a silent plea toward Sergei.

Aunt Frieda, sitting to Cassie’s left, patted her niece’s leg. “Baby, it’s not gonna help you any to sit there and watch her. You said yourself, you didn’t think she had anything to do with this.”

“Perhaps,” Kir said, wading into the tension-riddled room, “another option would be for me to have some time with Cassie so that I can understand, in full, what’s happened.”

Cassie let out a harsh exhale, snatched the remote off the coffee table and punched the off button with unnecessary roughness. “Nothing I shouldn’t have expected to happen.” She tossed the remote back to its place, the harsh clatter against the wood overloud in the room’s quiet. She looked to Frieda then Evette. “It’s okay. You can go. I’m not going to do anything stupid. Except maybe eat all that ice cream Evette brought me in one sitting.”

Proving his calm under pressure, Sergei rebutted as if the situation at large was no major event at all. “My bride tells me it cures all. I’ve since given Olga orders to keep the freezer stocked at all costs.”

Surprisingly, the humor worked, drawing a slight, yet fatigued smile from Cassie. “Guess that explains how she’s able to get it here so quickly.” Her shoulders sagged and she dipped her head forward, stretching the muscles in the back of her neck. “Really, girls. It’s okay.” She lifted her head and finally met Kir’s stare. “I need to tell him what happened.”

Frieda offered Kir a look that begged him to show patience.

Evette volleyed her gaze from Sergei to Cassie as though she wasn’t sure what to do.

Sergei closed the distance between him and his wife and nudged her off the fence. “Come, love. If you leave our son unattended with Olga and her desserts much longer, you’ll have no prayer of getting him to sleep before midnight.” He let Frieda exit first, guided his wife across the threshold, then shot Kir a sympathetic smile. “We are close if you need us.”

And then it was quiet. A gaping chasm of tension and churning hopelessness that left the air between them too thick and uncomfortable to breathe.

He shed himself of his jacket, took the space Frieda had vacated and pulled Cassie into his arms so her torso lay cradled against his chest. “Tell me.”

She laid it out. From the moment she’d arrived and learned Lizbet had been called in when it should have been her day off, to the final words her boss had uttered before he’d walked her to the bullpen and on to the front door. Every detail came out as though she’d replayed them a hundred times in her head, her voice drained and defeated until it finally cracked at the end. “It was mortifying. Lizbet was right there. She kept her head down the whole time, but everyone else watched every single detail.”

The tips of her fingers idly pushed and pulled against the fabric of his button-down, an absent, yet vulnerable motion that made him long to feel someone’s waning pulse beneath his fingertips. He covered her hand instead and pressed her palm against his heart. “I am sorry, milaya.”