I clear my throat and my thoughts. “Rooms are ready. Nursery first, it’s next to yours. Your mother has the room on the other side of you.”
I walk and they follow. Inside the nursery are cribs, monitors, a rocking chair, and a changing table with drawers that shut themselves. All in soothing blues and greens—it looks like a baby spa in here.
Mina stops on the threshold. The twins stop crying for a breath, then restart, confused. She crosses to the nearest crib and sets Xander down. Jennifer kisses the top of Yuri’s head and does the same.
“Diaper pail,” Mina says, scanning. She finds it and lets out the smallest breath.
“There will be more of everything by morning.”
“I don’t need more. I need familiar.” She touches the soft blanket she packed and lays it over the sheet. Xander’s hands open. He stares at the ceiling and makes a sound like a complaint he forgot to finish.
The house is quiet in the way big houses are. Sound is swallowed fast. The boys don’t like it. I add white noise on the monitor. A low, steady rush fills the room. The twins go quiet, listening.
Jennifer looks around, eyes quick. “Bathroom?”
“Two doors down. Everything is stocked. You also have en suite bathrooms.”
She nods, moves with purpose. Mina stands still and listens, memorizing what the room sounds like when her sons breathe here. I step back and give her space.
“Okay,” she says softly. “What’s next?”
I take them through the kitchen on the way back to the main hall so Mina can see where bottles will come from at night without waiting for staff. The night fridge is stocked. Formula is stacked behind a cabinet door a child can’t open. She checks the labels and the expiration dates without thinking about it. Good. She is not dazzled by the marble or the square footage.
We don’t linger. The house is a maze the first day. People get lost in it. I walk them back toward the bedrooms. The twins make new noises—short, uncertain—then settle again.
At the door to her room, Mina stops. “Thank you. For everything.”
“You’re here because it is necessary. You don’t owe me gratitude.”
“That’s not why I said it,” she says. Her eyes are tired and sure. “Good night.”
“Call if you need anything.” I look at the small screen on the wall with the list of rooms and the call buttons. “You too, Jennifer.”
She nods. Jennifer nods too, both of them ready for sleep, it seems.
In my office, the house feels different. Fuller. Marcus checks in on the internal channel. The night team is in place, perimeter is clean. Tanner is on the nursery hall.
I give the order I always give. “No chatter. Eyes open.”
I should feel victorious. I do not. I have my heirs secured under my roof. I have their mother and her mother. I also have two infants who smell like soap and warm cotton, a woman who is trying not to show fear, and a grandmother who has already decided how to fight me if I become another problem.
Fyodor arrives without knocking. He closes the door and keeps his hat on until he sits. I pour him tea to mark that we are going to talk like family and not like boss and advisor for three minutes. “This is unusual,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Unusual is expensive,” he says. “Expensive attracts eyes.”
“They were already looking. Now I choose what they see.”
“They see a man who brought a woman and two small sons into his house and said ‘marriage’ without a season of courtship.”
“They see that a boy who failed to kill me also failed to frighten her.”
“They also see a woman who used tobelong to the boy,” he says. He leaves the ugliness of the wordbelonghanging until I cut it in half by looking at him. “Your enemies will not swallow that down.”
“They can choke, for all I care.”
He doesn’t smile. “You want my counsel.”
