“Thank you,” she says finally.
“You’re welcome.”
Silence settles for a breath. She stands close enough that I can catch the ghost of clean soap under the remnants of champagne air. Her face is calmer than it was last night. The gunshot carved something into her. She smoothed it over before walking in here.
“You handled the execution,” I say. “Most people don’t.”
Her jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “I didn’t exactly have a choice.”
“True.”
“Is that the answer you wanted to hear?”
“I wanted the truth.”
“You got it.”
We look at each other across the steel table. I think of the moment before I fired: the way she inhaled, the way her eyes did not shut. Conviction, not numbness. She’ll be hard to shake.
I escort her back to the main floor. The music has softened; the crowd has thinned to loyalists and staff. Maksim is gone. Good.
Dimitri catches my eye from a door near the library; he tilts his head toward the alley exit in a question. I shake mine once. No trouble tonight.
At the curb a car waits for her. I open the door. She pauses with one hand on the frame. “Are you always this generous with your associates?” she asks.
“No.”
“Then what am I?”
I let the question hang. “You’re useful,” I say finally. “I’m keeping an eye on you.”
She nods once, climbs in, and is gone. The taillights smear red against wet pavement, then disappear into Fifth Avenue’s river of traffic.
I return inside and find the quiet balcony. The city throws its light up at me like a demand. Dimitri joins me with two cigarettes; I take one. Smoke cuts the night clean.
“Maksim will push again,” he says.
“He won’t get far.”
He exhales toward the skyline. “She has your attention.”
“She does.”
“That is not always helpful.”
“I know.”
We stand in silence while taxis thread below and the last of Pavel’s staff clears glasses. My mind runs the tape: her walk through the foyer, her refusal of champagne, the invisible line she drew between blending and resisting. The measured way she accepted the gun. The frankness when she said she did not sleep.
“She’s a bigger problem than I thought,” I say at last.
He glances sideways, amusement buried under caution. “Do you want me to dig deeper into her past?”
“Yes. Quietly. Double the shadow team. If she talks to anyone unusual, I want to know before she finishes the sentence.”
“Understood.”
He leaves me to the balcony and the city’s breath. I replay the last forty-eight hours with clinical precision: the bait file, her analysis, her composure in the study, the gunshot, the way shesteadied in the aftermath, the meeting, Maksim’s comment, the armory.
