I help her sit up more fully, propping her against the wall. She's shaking—shock, probably, combined with the head injury. She needs medical attention.
I key my radio. "Alexei. I need a medical team in the basement. Now. Anna is injured."
"On the way. What's the situation?"
"Bianca is gone. Sergei took her during the assault." I pause, forcing the next words out. "And start a full security review. Someone told Sergei exactly how to get to the safe room. Someone inside."
A long silence. Then: "Understood."
Anna grips my arm. "Find her, Misha. Please. Whatever it takes."
"I will."
The medical team arrives within minutes. I watch as they check Anna's vitals, shine lights in her eyes, prepare to move her. She protests weakly—she wants to help, wants to be part of the hunt—but she's in no condition to do anything except rest.
"Take care of her," I tell the medics. "And keep me informed of her condition."
They lift her onto a stretcher and carry her away. I remain in the ruined corridor, standing over Petrov's body, over the two attackers he took with him.
Petrov fought well. He did his duty to the last breath. I'll make sure his family is taken care of. It's the least I can do for a man who gave his life protecting what mattered most to me.
Alexei appears at the top of the stairs, his face grim.
"The security review," he says. "I've already started pulling data."
"And?"
"You're not going to like what I found."
We convene in my study—one of the few rooms untouched by the battle.
I stand at the window, staring out at the grounds where bodies are still being collected. Dawn is breaking, painting the carnage in shades of gold and pink. Beautiful. Obscene. The contrast makes my stomach turn.
"Tell me," I say without turning around.
Alexei pulls up data on his tablet. "The team that took Bianca—they didn't come through the main assault. They usedan old service entrance on the east side of the house, one that connects to the basement via a back stairway."
"That entrance has been sealed for years."
"It was. Until three days ago, when someone reactivated the access codes."
I turn to face him. "Who?"
"Only a handful of people have the authority to modify those codes. You. Me." He pauses. "And Lenkov."
Yevgeni Lenkov. Head of internal security. Twenty-two years with my family. The man who was in the command center tonight, monitoring the internal feeds, calmly reporting that no one had breached the main house while Sergei's team was moving through corridors he'd opened for them.
"That's not proof," I say, though something cold is settling in my gut.
"There's more." Alexei swipes to another screen. "I pulled his communication records. Encrypted calls to an unidentified number over the past three months. The calls correspond with key moments in Sergei's planning—the surveillance increase we detected, the reconnaissance flights, the timing of tonight's assault."
"How did we miss this?"
"He's good. Twenty-two years of learning our systems, our protocols, our blind spots. He knew exactly how to hide his tracks." Alexei's jaw tightens. "And he knew we trusted him enough not to look too closely."
I stare at the data, my mind working through the implications. Lenkov has been with us since before I was born. He watched me grow up. He was here when my parents died,helped me rebuild the security systems afterward. He knows this estate better than anyone.
Which is exactly why he was able to betray us so effectively.
