The evidence glowed on my screens. Irrefutable. Damning. A complete picture of exactly what had been done to the woman I loved.
Anton hadn't just found Auralia's paintings. He'd studied her.
The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. He'd done his research. Read her posts, probably. Tracked her online presence. Watched her long enough to understand what mattered to her—not just her connection to me, not just her value as leverage, but the thing she wanted most in the world.
Her art.
Her dream.
The cruelty of it was surgical. This wasn't a blunt instrument—wasn't a threat to her body or a demand for information. This was something worse. Anton had taken the hope that lived at the center of her heart and turned it into a weapon.
She'd cried when she'd read that email. Happy tears, the kind that came from finally being seen. From believing, for one bright moment, that her work was good enough. That she was good enough.
All of it manufactured. All of it designed to hurt her.
I saved the evidence. Encrypted it twice—once with my standard protocols, once with the particular algorithm only Nikolai knew how to decrypt. Chain of custody. Documentation. The kind of careful record-keeping that would matter when we made Anton answer for what he'd done.
My hands were steady as I worked. They always were, when I was in mission mode. The trembling would come later, in private, when I allowed myself to feel what was currently locked behind the walls I'd built.
But one thought burned through the professional detachment.
I had to tell her.
I had to watch her face when I explained that Elena Voss didn't exist. That the gallery was fake. That every word of praise in that email had been calculated manipulation from a man who wanted to use her dreams to destroy her.
And then I had to make sure Anton paid.
Not just for the threat to her safety. Not just for the surveillance and the scheming and the way he'd forced us all to live in defensive positions.
For every moment of hope he'd stolen from her.
For the way her face had lit up when she'd burst into my office.
For the tears she'd cried before she knew they were poison.
I closed my laptop. Rose from my chair. The cold coffee sat untouched, forgotten, a minor casualty of the war we were fighting.
Auralia was somewhere in this building. Probably curled up somewhere soft, probably trying not to think about what I might find. Waiting for news she already suspected was bad.
I had to tell her.
And then I had to burn Anton's empire to the ground.
Thelivingroomcouchhad become her nest over these weeks—a particular corner where the afternoon light fell just right, where she could curl against the cushions and feel contained. Ghost sprawled across her lap, his grey head resting on her thigh, those mismatched eyes tracking me the moment I entered the room.
She was holding a book. Some paperback with a creased spine and a cover I didn't recognize. She hadn't turned a page in the twenty minutes I'd been watching her from the doorway. The same page, the same position, the same careful performanceof someone pretending to read while their mind churned somewhere else entirely.
She knew.
The moment she looked up—really looked, meeting my eyes with that particular directness she had—I could see it. The knowledge already forming in the set of her jaw, the way her hand stilled on Ghost's fur.
"It's him, isn't it."
Not a question. A statement. The particular tone of someone who'd been expecting the worst and was simply waiting for confirmation.
I crossed to her. Sat on the edge of the couch, close enough to touch but not touching yet. Ghost whined softly, sensing the tension in the air the way dogs always did.
"Ptichka."
