Is it strength? Or is it hiding?
The silence of the chamber offers no answer.
I rise, pacing to the window. Outside, the estate grounds lie still, the gardens ghostly under moonlight. Guards move in pairs along the paths, rifles slung across their shoulders, eyes scanning the dark. They’re loyal. Or so they appear.
I light a cigarette, inhale deep, let the smoke burn through me.
“Everyone’s a suspect,” I murmur.
Not just her. All of them. Every man who drinks my vodka and calls me brat. Every captain who swears loyalty with one hand and counts profits with the other. Every guard who watches the door but may already have sold his watchfulness to someone else.
Trust is a luxury. One I can’t afford.
By nightfall, I issue the orders. Every phone checked. Every ledger reviewed. Every man watched, whether he knows it or not. No exceptions.
Not even her.
Especially not her.
Dimitri comes to me after the orders are given, his face unreadable. “You want her followed?”
“Yes.”
“She won’t like it.”
“She doesn’t need to.”
He studies me for a moment. “You think she could be the leak.”
I say nothing. The silence is louder than words.
When he leaves, I stand at the window again, smoke curling around me, eyes fixed on the dark horizon.
This isn’t just about betrayal. This is about power. About control. About the fact that someone thought they could carve into me and leave me hollow.
They were wrong.
Night sinks heavy over the estate, the kind of dark that presses against the windows like a hand. I haven’t moved fromthe study in hours. The fire has burned low, the whiskey in my glass untouched. I watch the flames gutter and think of steel and ash and blood scattered across gravel.
The convoy wasn’t a loss—it was a theft of certainty. Someone close enough to breathe my air sold us out. That thought cuts deeper than the millions lost.
My phone buzzes once on the desk. A message from Dimitri:Surveillance in place. No one moves untracked.
I type a short reply:Good. Keep it tight.
My gaze lingers on the shadows across the room, as though an answer might shape itself there. Instead, what I see is her. Vivienne, steady under my stare, pen scratching across paper like nothing could touch her.
Calm when everyone else trembled. Calm when I pulled the trigger.
The list of suspects is long, but her name won’t leave my thoughts.
Chapter Nine - Vivienne
I move too quickly, every step echoing in the stillness of my apartment. The travel bag waits open on the bed like a mouth demanding to be fed, and I throw things in without order—cash, passport, chargers, a spare pair of shoes, enough clothes to disappear for a while if I have to. My hands are steady, but my chest isn’t.
My breath comes sharp, clipped, the sound too loud in the silence.
The essentials go in first. Anything that ties me to this place, to this city, stays behind. I tell myself that makes it easier. Clean break. No trace. Yet my fingers falter when I brush over certain things: photographs tucked into drawers, books with my handwriting in the margins. Ghosts of a life I’ve already buried.
