Of course she would survive it, Gleb thinks. It's bitter and uncharitable, but it's hard to be anything other than that where her friendship with Dmitry is concerned. He doesn't even know most of the specifics of it, only that the other man's arrival changed and nearly ruined everything between him and Anya, despite how mad she seemed to be at him and the other conman who accompanied her to Paris the night he arrived here himself. Somehow, in hardly any time at all, they went from that, and Dmitry asking him not to tell Anya of his presence in the city, to Anya coming to tell him that Dmitry had just professed his love to her. It wasn't exactly the act of a friend. Neither was what he said in the elevator, or the way he apparently stayed away after, or as far as he knows, what Dmitry said when he did finally turn back up again. (He hasn't asked for details; he doesn't think he could stomach them.) Maybe he can't understand the connection between the two of them, but nothing that he knows of having happened here gives him any clue as to what the appeal there might be.
Even that might not matter quite so much if not for the doubt he can't wholly shake, either, the sense of being a second pick of some kind. She chose him, yes, weeks ago. She did so in Dmitry's absence. Would that choice, the one that she'd previously said she wouldn't make, have been different if Dmitry had seen her first? Would any of this have ever happened at all had Dmitry not arrived months after he did?
Try as he might to ignore it, he can't silence all of those thoughts at once, not when he has to see her so upset over someone who never seemed to show her very much regard at all. There is, of course, no way to choose whether or not to care for a person. Gleb learned that the hard way when he had orders that would have required him to kill a woman he already couldn't get out of his head. It hurts even so.
"It's something we all have to get used to around here, I think," he says with a frown, unsure how to address any of the rest of what she's said. "People leaving."
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Even that might not matter quite so much if not for the doubt he can't wholly shake, either, the sense of being a second pick of some kind. She chose him, yes, weeks ago. She did so in Dmitry's absence. Would that choice, the one that she'd previously said she wouldn't make, have been different if Dmitry had seen her first? Would any of this have ever happened at all had Dmitry not arrived months after he did?
Try as he might to ignore it, he can't silence all of those thoughts at once, not when he has to see her so upset over someone who never seemed to show her very much regard at all. There is, of course, no way to choose whether or not to care for a person. Gleb learned that the hard way when he had orders that would have required him to kill a woman he already couldn't get out of his head. It hurts even so.
"It's something we all have to get used to around here, I think," he says with a frown, unsure how to address any of the rest of what she's said. "People leaving."