“I’m calling about Elena Volkov,” I say, voice low. “You finished the background?”
“Everything you asked for. Clean. Too clean, honestly.”
My jaw tightens. “Explain.”
“She completed school with perfect grades. No disciplinary notes. No medical issues. Nothing that raises alarms.”
No medical issues. No behavioral issues. No human issues at all.
“What about signs of abuse?” I ask, surprising myself with the edge in my voice. “Anything?”
A pause on the other end.
“No red flags. No hospital visits, no bruises noted in health records, no complaints. Nothing physical. Nothing emotional that we can track.”
I drag a hand through my hair. Of course it wouldn’t show up on paper. Control rarely leaves bruises.
“Friends?” I push.
“Doesn’t look like she has any,” Rafe says bluntly. “No consistent friend group, no social outings. Any time she’sphotographed outside the home, she’s with family—her father, mother, sometimes her cousins. That’s it.”
No friends. No independence. No life outside her father’s shadow.
“She never goes out with people her age?” I ask.
“Nope. No clubs, no girls’ nights, no trips. Nothing.”
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
“Anytime, Boss.”
He hangs up. I lie back on the bed, staring at the ceiling as the truth settles in my chest like ice. She wasn’t trained to be a good wife. She was trained not to exist without permission. And the part that should please me—the part that should find comfort in her obedience—doesn’t sit right in my gut. Not after watching her freeze every time her father looked her way. Not after noticing that tiny spark in her eye. It was small, but it was real. A flash of something she keeps buried so deep even she forgets it’s there. I close my eyes and exhale slowly.
What can I do… to see that spark again? What can I do to make her look at me the way she did in that brief heartbeat—like she didn’t know whether to fear me or challenge me?
I shouldn’t want it. I don’t have time to want things. Sleep doesn’t come easy. It never has, but tonight it drags me under faster than usual—weighted by too many questions, too much silence from the woman down the hall.
When my eyes finally close, the darkness shifts. And suddenly I’m ten years old again.
The schoolyard smells like dust and sunshine. Kids crowd around the track, shouting and laughing, all knees and elbows and scraped shins. Dante stands beside me, grinning like he was born to win.
“We’re gonna smoke them,” he says, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
I laugh. “You are. I’ll try to keep up.”
The whistle blows.
We run.
Dante is a blur ahead of me, arms pumping, hair flying, pure joy propelling his feet. I stay a step behind him.
Just one. Always one.
He crosses the finish line first. I cross second. He throws his arms up in victory, and I slap his back, smiling with him like the sun is inside my chest.
“You killed it,” I tell him.
“So did you!” he replies, breathless and proud.
