I should be annoyed.
I should be angry.
Instead, something loosens in my chest. Something unnamable. Something dangerous.
“Oh, good,” Arseny says, watching my face. “She’s alive. I was about to call in a search party.”
“She’s at the school.”
“Does she know you have Victor shadowing her? Or that her car’s got more trackers than a tagged tiger?”
“She knows enough.”
Which is a lie. She knows nothing about the men who rotate shifts around her.
“The New York meeting,” I say. “Push it two hours. I want Collins’ movements tracked. Airports, hotels, who he’s meeting.”
“And the Mikhailovs?” Timur asks.
“I’ll deal with them personally.”
Alexei Mikhailov hasn’t spoken to me since Irina vanished. He blamed me for her leaving. As if I’d stolen her instead ofwatching her walk out the front door without so much as a look back at her children.
“The property deal,” I continue, regaining focus.
Arseny slides a folder across the table. “Parker Group’s threatening to leak Rotterdam files if we force the acquisition.”
“Let them. Then buy them through the shell corp. Fire the board. Make examples.”
Arseny raises a brow. “Brutal.”
“Necessary.”
“And Collins?” Timur presses.
“We wait. He made a mistake showing himself. I want to see what else he gives up.”
What I don’t say: No one touches her again. No one from that old world even breathes in her direction.
Bella—contract or not—is mine.
“We land in thirty,” Timur says.
New York. The skyline will be gray and bristling, the air wet with February filth, but the deal we’re here to close has teeth—and Davis Collins might not be the only ghost waiting in this city.
“Good. I need to be back in California by tomorrow night.”
Arseny glances up. “Something important?”
I should lie. Tell him it’s business. A meeting. A numbers game.
But instead, I say, “I promised Alya I’d help pick out her school bag.”
Arseny blinks once, then recovers with a slow nod. “Right. Priorities.”
I lean back. Eyes open. Mind nowhere near this jet.
I could send her nanny. Or Bella. Bella would do it—she’d make a whole afternoon of it. Lunch, photos, some over-the-top commentary about glitter zippers and unicorns that would make Alya roll her eyes and secretly love it.
