The line went dead.
I was already running.
Through the empty gallery, past Nikolai's sharp "What?" and Kostya's confused growl. Out the door, into the Chelsea night that was still too perfect, still too mild, completely indifferent to what was happening.
"The compound!" I shouted. "He hit the fucking compound!"
Nikolai's face went white.
One second of frozen horror—the particular expression of a man who'd just realized his wife, his daughter, everything he loved was in danger. Then he was moving too, phone already at his ear, calling the guards who should have answered and weren't answering.
The drive was seven minutes.
Seven minutes of Kostya's driving—aggressive, reckless, the SUV taking corners at speeds that should have killed us. Sevenminutes of Nikolai trying every number in rotation, getting voicemail, getting silence, getting nothing.
Seven minutes of knowing.
I knew before we arrived. Knew with the sick certainty of someone who'd seen the pattern, who understood exactly what Anton had done. The gallery was never the target. Auralia was never supposed to be at that meeting.
The meeting was the distraction.
We'd pulled almost everyone to Chelsea. Left the compound with minimal guards. And Anton—
The gates were open.
That was wrong. The gates were never open. Automated security, manual backup, the particular paranoia of a family that had survived by never leaving vulnerabilities.
Kostya didn't slow down. The SUV crashed through into chaos.
Bodies.
Two guards crumpled near the entrance, their positions suggesting they'd been hit fast, hit hard, never had a chance to sound an alarm. Blood pooled dark on the gravel, already going tacky in the evening air.
The front door stood ajar.
I was out of the vehicle before it stopped moving. Running again—through the entrance, into the foyer where I'd first brought Auralia to meet my family. The space was wrong. Furniture overturned. A lamp shattered on the floor. Signs of a struggle that hadn't been enough.
"Sophie!" Nikolai's voice was unrecognizable. Raw. The voice of a man whose control had finally, completely shattered. "SOPHIE!"
The nursery.
The thought came from somewhere primal—Katerina, the baby, they wouldn't have taken the baby—
But when I reached the nursery, it was empty.
The crib stood undisturbed. The stuffed animals lined up on their shelf. No baby. No sign of struggle here, which meant either they'd taken her or—
"She's with Mikhail." Nikolai's voice came from behind me. Hollow. "Sophie texted earlier. Said she was taking Katerina to see Dedushka at the secondary location."
Relief. Sharp and brief.
Then the rest of it crashed back.
"Maya was here," Kostya said. His voice had gone strange. Flat. The particular tone of someone dissociating from a reality too painful to process. "She was supposed to stay. Protect them."
I found myself in the living room.
The couch where Auralia had curled with Ghost. The spot where she'd nested while I traced emails in my office. Her book lay face-down on the floor, pages crumpled—she'd never leave a book like that, never, she treated them like sacred objects.
