Her eyes narrow slightly while she searches through the memory. “Ivan called him the ‘old man.’”
The phrase hangs in the quiet kitchen. I watch her closely.
“He spoke about him often?” I ask.
“Not often,” Lila replies. “But when he did the tone felt different.”
“Different how?”
She shrugs carefully, mindful of the injury beneath her sweater. “Respectful. Not fear exactly. More like the way someone talks about a mentor.”
My mind stores the details automatically. Ivan Malenko is ambitious and well-connected. The idea that someone stands above him does not surprise me, but the information still matters.
“Did he ever mention a name?”
Lila shakes her head. “No. Just that phrase.The old man.”
She lifts the mug again before adding, “I never thought much about it at the time.”
“That makes sense.”
“You think Kiren should know?” she asks.
I nod once. “Yes.”
Outside the kitchen window, the snow glows faintly beneath the morning light while the estate remains quiet around us. Somewhere deeper inside the house, a door opens and closes again. The day has begun.
The estate moves at its own pace during the day. It only took me a few days to notice it.
Somewhere down the hall, a door closes with a muted click. Footsteps move across the marble entry before fading again, absorbed by the thick walls and wide corridors that make the house feel more like a private hotel than a home.
Kiren’s security team moves quietly through the property, rarely lingering in one place for long. Their presence remains subtle but never disappears entirely. Protection has a sound to it. Not loud or obvious, but constant.
I sit curled into the corner of the sofa with a mug of hot tea in my hands and a medical journal open across my lap, though I have not truly read the page in several minutes. The thin paper feels cool beneath my fingertips while my eyes move over the printed words without absorbing them. I have attempted the same paragraph three times now, and each time my mind slides away from it before reaching the end.
That rarely happens to me. In the trauma unit, my attention locks in even amid chaos. I can focus through alarms, shouting, and the metallic scent of blood that lingers in emergency rooms during long shifts. Distractions usually dissolve the moment a patient enters the room. But here, in the calm quiet of the estate, my concentration refuses to cooperate.
My thoughts keep circling back to the same detail.The old man.
I lower the journal slowly and rest it on the sofa beside me.
Outside the window, a black security vehicle moves slowly along the far edge of the driveway before disappearing behind the hedges near the gate. Even when the estate looks quiet, Kiren’s world is always moving. The realization settles deeper in my thoughts. That world is now part of my life. The sound of tires moving across snow-covered gravel breaks through the silence.
My attention lifts immediately toward the front of the house. The noise travels faintly through the walls as the vehicle approaches along the long drive outside. The slow crunch of tiresgrows louder for a moment before the engine cuts off near the entrance.
I close the journal completely and place it on the coffee table. A few seconds pass. The front door opens somewhere beyond the hallway. Cold winter air slips briefly into the house before the door shuts again with a solid, familiar sound. Heavy footsteps move across the marble entry.
My chest tightens without warning. The reaction surprises me even though it’s happened every evening this week. Since the night Kiren brought me back to the estate after the kidnapping, my body seems to recognize his arrival before my mind fully processes it. Some small part of me listens for it now without conscious effort.
The door to the sitting room opens a moment later. Kiren stands in the doorway. For a heartbeat, the room feels smaller. Not because he fills the space physically, though his presence does carry that effect, but because his attention immediately draws the atmosphere around him into focus.
Snow dusts the shoulders of his dark coat where the cold air has clung to the fabric during the short walk from the car. His eyes move across the space quickly. A quiet assessment.
I’ve watched him do this enough times to recognize the habit now. Every room receives the same brief inspection the moment he enters it. Corners. Windows. Doors. Movement. Only when that silent evaluation finishes does his gaze focus on me.
“You’re home early,” I remark, though the fading light outside suggests evening has already begun its slow approach.
Kiren removes his coat and drapes it carefully over the back of a nearby chair before answering. “The roads slowed things down.”
