That stupid, unavoidable slice of time when the security system pings the external update server for certificate validation and firmware compliance—something the building management insists on because the vendor sold it as "necessary for optimal performance." I signed off on it years ago because the vendor was the same one my father used at the Estate, and I believed blood meant protection.
Now the same shared backbone is a knife.
I scroll again. The access token doesn't just look valid—it looks familiar. Like a key that belongs in the lock.
The credential tag traces back to the Estate network.
Not a clean line, not "Boris Baranov" stamped in bold letters, but the kind of trace that reveals exactly who has the reach and patience to do this. The kind of trace that shows someone used a legacy admin token—old, trusted, rarely audited becausethe men who designed the system never imagined it would be turned inward.
Boris.
My uncle doesn't need to send men to kick down a door if he can make the door forget it's locked.
The glass walls around the penthouse suddenly feel like a joke. Forty-seven floors up and still exposed, because the threat isn't climbing the walls. It's already inside the wiring.
I look out at the city without seeing it—all those streets, lights, and moving dots of cars. All that life I control in a thousand small ways.
None of it matters if the elevator opens for the wrong people.
I stand slowly.
The chair makes a faint sound against the floor—leather shifting against wood—and I pause, listening, absurdly afraid it will wake him.
Maksim doesn't stir.
He's gone deep. Good.
Bad.
I track the alert again. The breach occurred three hours ago. That doesn't mean someone is in the building; it means theycanbe. It means they harvested enough to build a route, enough to map my patterns, enough to know exactly which doors I lock and which I leave open. Maybe the data is already sitting on a drive in Boris's pocket. Maybe it's being passed to hitters while we breathe.
I don't have the luxury of guessing.
We need to leave.
Not to the Estate. Not to one of my city apartments. Those are inside the same ecosystem. Too many eyes. Too many hands. Too many ways to be cornered.
My mind cycles through options like a malfunctioning machine—because it's trained to. Because in a crisis, my brain makes lists.
Hotel? Laughable. Too many variables.
A safehouse under Alexei's control? If Boris has compromised my protocols, he can compromise the men who run them.
Out of state? Too slow. The airports will be watched. The highways are choke points.
There is one place that exists outside all of it.
A lake house three hours north. Purchased five years ago through shell companies layered like armor. Cash. Contractors from out of state who never learned my name. No paper trail that leads back to Ivan Baranov unless someone already knows where to dig, and no one knows where to dig.
No one knows it exists.
Not my father.
Not Boris.
Not even Maksim.
I built it for myself, for the day paranoia became a necessity.
