This chaos wore my wife’s face, slept in my bed and carried my child, and I didn’t know how to fix it.
Kirill stood across from my desk, his expression carefully neutral as he delivered the report I wished I didn’t have to listen to. “Boss, the tech team found activity on one of the old landlines. The one in the greenhouse.”
“When?”
“Two days ago. Incoming call, lasted approximately one minute.” He disclosed. “It’s a line that hasn’t been used in years. Not even registered in our current security protocols.”
Of course it wasn’t. The greenhouse had been my parents’ sanctuary, built when security was handled differently, before we’d modernized everything. I’d left it largely untouched after their death, a memorial of sorts. The old rotary phone on the wall was a relic, something I’d never thought to remove or monitor.
Someone had known that. Someone had done their research.
“Can we trace the call?”
“Dead end. Burner phone, activated that day, destroyed immediately after. Whoever made it knew what they were doing.” Kirill’s jaw tightened. “But the timing—”
Lined up with her sudden behavior change.
“Mila.” I finished the thought, my voice flat. “I know.”
I’d watched Mila carefully over the past forty-eight hours, cataloging every flinch, every distant stare, every moment she retreated inside herself. The phone call in the greenhouse explained everything—the pale face, the trembling hands, the way she’d looked like she’d seen a ghost when I’d found her that evening.
Someone was reaching her. And she hadn’t told me.
“Maybe I should send one of the guards to call for her so she can clarify things?” Kirill asked, his tone tentative.
“No.” The word came out harder than I’d intended. “I’ll handle it.”
He nodded and left, and I was alone with the knowledge that my wife was keeping secrets that could get us all killed.
The rational part of my brain—the part that had built an empire on cold calculation—knew what I should do. Confront her immediately. Demand answers. Use every tool at my disposal to extract the truth, because in my world, secrets were weapons and ignorance was death.
But there was another part of me, newer and more dangerous, that remembered the fear in her eyes. The grief. The way she’d looked so fragile in that greenhouse, like one wrong word would shatter her completely. That part made me hesitate. It made me weak.
So instead of confronting her, I watched.
I hated that I’d been reduced to surveilling my own wife like she was an enemy asset. But I couldn’t bring myself to push her, not yet. Not until I understood what I was dealing with.
**********
The next afternoon, I tracked her movements through the house via the security feeds. She’d spent the morning in Anya’s room, attending virtual classes. Then she’d disappeared into thelibrary for an hour, ostensibly studying but mostly staring at the same page.
Then she’d moved toward the gardens.
I intercepted Dimitri in the hallway, keeping my voice casual. “I’m going for a walk. Make sure no one disturbs me.”
He understood immediately. His eyes flicked to the security monitor showing Mila’s slim figure moving through the rose garden, and he nodded. “Yes, boss.”
I followed her at a distance, moving through the grounds with the practiced silence that had kept me alive this long. She didn’t meet anyone. Didn’t make a call. She just stood among the bare winter roses, one hand clutched in her coat pocket, her whole body trembling despite the thick layers she wore.
I positioned myself behind a line of evergreens where I could watch without being seen. She stood there for nearly ten minutes, not moving, barely breathing. Her face was turned toward the gray sky, and even from this distance, I could see the tears on her cheeks.
She wasn’t meeting a lover. Wasn’t conducting some clandestine exchange. She was just… breaking. Quietly. Privately. Where she thought no one could see.
It was worse than any betrayal I could have imagined.
Because I knew that look. I’d seen it in the mirror after my parents died, after I’d realized that grief was a luxury I couldn’t afford in this life. I’d buried it deep, channeled it into rage and ambition and the relentless pursuit of control.
But Mila wore her grief openly, and it made her vulnerable in ways that terrified me.
