After he left, I sat alone in the gathering dark.
The sun had crossed the sky while I pretended to work, and now shadows pooled in the corners of my study like spilled ink.I poured myself a whiskey.Good stuff, aged twenty years, worth more per bottle than most people made in a week.It tasted like nothing.
I stood at the window, watching the last light bleed from the sky.The gardens were blue with dusk, the frost on the hedges catching the dying sun.
I could tell her.
The thought circled back, persistent as the wolf pacing behind my ribs.I could walk to her room right now, lay out Petrov’s findings, warn her that someone in her hotel wanted her hurt or scared or destroyed.She’d be safer knowing.She could take precautions.Examine her staff with new eyes.Root out the threat before it escalated further.
She was smart.Capable.She’d proven that during the heating crisis, when she’d rallied her staff and managed a hundred angry guests and turned disaster into a story about service.If I gave her the information, she’d handle it.
But then she’d be capable.Self-sufficient.She’d solve the problem herself, prove she didn’t need me, didn’t need the protection my presence provided.
And what would bind her to me then?The contract?A piece of paper she’d already demonstrated she could see through?
You’re using her fear to control her.The wolf’s voice dripped with disgust.She sees the real you, stays anyway, and you repay her by keeping her vulnerable.This is weakness, not strength.This is the act of a frightened child, not a vor.
It wasn’t weakness.It was strategy.
Information was power.I’d learned that lesson in the cold halls of the boarding school, where knowing which teacher to avoid and which student would report you could mean the difference between a beating and a peaceful night.I’d refined it in the years of building an empire from nothing, when every scrap of intelligence was a weapon to be hoarded.I’d perfected it in every interaction with predators who would devour the vulnerable without hesitation.
I protected her my way.She didn’t need to know how.
Coward, the wolf said again.You’re not protecting her.You’re protecting yourself.You’re terrified that if she doesn’t need you, she won’t want you.And you’d rather keep her scared than risk finding out.
I drained the whiskey and poured another.The burn did nothing to silence him.
Movement in the garden caught my attention.A figure crossing the frozen lawn toward the garage, wrapped in a cashmere coat.She walked quickly, purpose in every stride.
Lena.Heading to her car.Going to the hotel, probably.
I watched her move across the winter-white lawn, her breath misting in the cold air.Her stride was confident despite everything I’d done to her last night.Her head was high.Her shoulders were straight.She moved like a woman who had nothing to apologize for, nothing to be ashamed of.
Like a woman who had looked a monster in the eye and refused to flinch.
I could open the window.Call her name.Tell her what I knew.
Instead, I stood in the shadows like the predator I was, watching through glass as she disappeared into the garage.A moment later, her car emerged and wound down the driveway, taillights glowing red against the gray dusk until they vanished around the curve.
She didn’t look back.Didn’t glance toward the manor where I stood in the dark, whiskey in hand, secrets burning in my chest.
Good.Let her go.
Let her prove herself capable at the hotel.Handle whatever small crisis awaited her tonight.Tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, something would happen that pushed her back toward me.The insider would escalate.The fear would return.And she’d need my protection again.
That was the plan.That was always the plan.
You’re pathetic, the wolf said quietly.She offered you something real, and you’re too afraid to take it.
Maybe I was pathetic.But I was also in control.And control was all I had left.
I turned from the window and sat down with my grandfather’s files.Victory was a week away.Soon Senator William Prescott would be destroyed, his legacy in ruins, his name synonymous with corruption and child abandonment.Fifteen years of patient work would finally bear fruit.
I worked until midnight, until the words blurred and my eyes burned and the whiskey bottle sat half-empty beside the files that would destroy my grandfather.Somewhere around ten, I heard Lena return.Heard her footsteps in the hallway, her voice murmuring something to Alice, the soft sound of her climbing the stairs.
Her footsteps paused outside my study door.Just for a moment.Just long enough for me to stop breathing, to strain toward that door with every fiber of my being.
Then she walked on.Up the stairs.To her room.Alone.
