“He would be easy to crack, Shura.”
“Yebat’! Don’t you think I know that?” He runs a hand through his thinning hair and swears again. “But it doesn’t matter how easy the job would be. It would be her—Katya—doing s**t that I ought to be protecting her from.”
“So she keeps reminding me.” He turns to me with fire in his eyes. “She won’t talk to me because she says I treat her like property. Are you gonna stop talking to me, too?”
I keep my voice calm. “We both know I would react the exact same way if I was in your place.”
“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”
I raise my hands. “Just a piece of advice: accepting who Natalia is has worked a lot better for me than trying to mold her into something she’s not.”
Shura curses once more under his breath, but he stops pacing.
“Natalia was never and is neve
