He nods but doesn’t belabor the point. “The recordings include conversations between Aurora and VIP clients. She managed private events, handled sensitive reservations, and facilitated introductions between people who expected absolute discretion. Several of those conversations are on the archive, but Karpov won’t get anything from the last three days. Grigor confirmed that was the last download.”
I’m relieved that my lapse of control isn’t something Karpov can get his hands on. He’d use it against me by using Aurora against me. Right now, he thinks she’s connected just to Dominic. If he finds out she means anything to me, he’ll make acquiring her a top priority. I blink and try to return my focus to what Viktor is telling me. “Sorry. What kind of conversations?”
“Client preferences, requests for specific services, names, account numbers, and personal, not necessarily legal, detailsshared in confidence. If Karpov has those fragments, he doesn’t just have leverage over you. He has leverage over her.” Viktor closes the file. “Some of those clients will pay significant money to keep their conversations private. Karpov knows that. Aurora’s name is attached to every one of those interactions because she facilitated them.”
Aurora managed the VIP floor for six years. She facilitated introductions, handled sensitive reservations, and maintained relationships with people who expected absolute discretion. Those people trusted her with information they wouldn’t share with their own attorneys, and Dominic recorded every word of it without her knowledge or consent for months. Karpov now owns those recordings, and he’ll use them against her the moment it becomes useful.
“Does she know?”
“I doubt it. Dominic wouldn’t have told her about the devices. She probably assumed the rooms were private, which is the same assumption everyone else made.” He looks down at his tablet. “The cleaning crew Dominic brought in to install the devices was there at a time when few other employees were scheduled, and it was on Aurora’s day off.”
“He probably knew she’d figure out something was off about it.” I’m relieved by Dominic’s insight in this regard because it protects her from the worst of his actions. “I’ll handle it.”
Viktor sets down his tablet and stands. He buttons his jacket, pockets both phones, and walks toward the elevator but stops at the door and turns back. “You’ll handle it.” He repeats my words back to me, and the tone makes it clear he’s not confirming a plan. He’s marking a position. “You’ll handle telling Aurora that the boss you just killed in front of her was also secretly recordingher private conversations, and those recordings are now owned by Karpov, who will absolutely use them as leverage.”
“Yes, I will.”
He pauses for a second. “You’ll handle it objectively and lay out all her options, right?”
I don’t answer beyond saying, “Good night, Viktor.”
He glances out the windows, where dawn is creeping into the night sky. “What’s left of it.” With that, he leaves, taking his personal judgments and innuendos with him, but they and his unspoken criticism linger in my mind long after his departure.
9
AURORA
Iwake up at eleven with the sun slicing through blinds I don’t recognize, in a bed that isn’t mine, wearing clothes I didn’t choose. My first coherent thought is that Dominic is dead. My second is that I slept with his killer not even an hour before his death. My third is that I locked myself in this room last night and Adrian didn’t try the door, which is either reassurance or strategy, and I’m too tired to decide which.
I lie still for several minutes and listen. The penthouse is quiet except for the low hum of an air conditioning system that sounds expensive and a faint murmur from down the hall that could be a phone call or a television. The situation assembles itself piece by piece.
I’m on the thirty-second floor of a building I can’t leave without a security code I don’t have yet. My boss is dead, and my ex-boyfriend is investigating the death. A man named Karpov wants information I don’t have and will kill me when he’s done if he gets hold of me.
I get up, shower, and brush my teeth with a toothbrush still in its packaging that someone left on the bathroom counter. I sort through my bag, wondering who packed it for me. I’m all set for a track meet, but that’s about it. They weirdly included six pairs of underwear but only one bra. I slip on something more suited to working out than facing abratvaboss, which seems far more credible now than when Marisol mentioned it, and walk down the hall.
Adrian is in the study off the living room, sitting behind a desk with a laptop and two phones. He’s wearing a different shirt than last night but the same unreadable expression, and he looks like he hasn’t slept at all. He stands when I appear in the doorway.
“There’s a coffee machine if you want coffee, espresso, or a cappuccino. There’s food in the refrigerator.”
“I’m not hungry.” I lean against the door frame, mirroring his posture from last night. “You said we had a lot to discuss.”
He nods and gestures to the chair across from his desk, so I enter the room and sit. He doesn’t immediately. He closes the laptop, sets both phones face down, and then takes his chair. The deliberateness of each action tells me whatever he’s about to say required preparation.
“Karpov has recordings that include you.” He delivers it flat. “Your client conversations, your introductions, and your reservation handling. Dominic was recording those rooms for months. There are certain things in there that aren’t…strictly legal.”
The meaning hits a second later. “My conversations with clients.”
“Dominic captured every confidence they shared, every request they made, and every introduction you facilitated. Even worse, Karpov has fragments of the archive.”
I can’t move as I struggle to rearrange everything I understood about the last several months of my career. Every private conversation I had with a client in those rooms, every confidence I received, every favor I arranged, and every discreet introduction I brokered between people who trusted that the walls were private was a charade.
None of it was private. Dominic was recording me the same way he was recording Adrian, and I never suspected it. I trusted the rooms because everyone else did too. I had no idea who Dominic really was, or the dangerous game he was playing, and I walked right into the crossfire because of misplaced trust.
Dominic captured months of my conversations, and some of the most damning tidbits go through my mind. Mr. Hadley, the mayor’s aide, told me about his daughter’s rehab while I arranged a private birthday dinner for his wife, who didn’t know. The Venezuelan diplomat who asked me to hold an envelope for three hours and never explained what was inside. Every client who leaned across a table and told me something they’d never tell their wives, their partners, or their attorneys trusted me with the parts of their lives they couldn’t show in daylight, and I trusted the rooms to keep those conversations safe.
Dominic recorded all of it, and now a man I’ve never met owns those conversations. “Does this Karpov have copies?”
“He probably has complete conversations of the older exchanges. Grigor recovered the primary archive but found out an hour ago that Karpov was in the process of downloading files, as he did every three days, when Dominic was killed. He didn’tget the full conversations for the past three days, but he likely got enough fragments that his IT people can get something from them. We don’t know exactly which conversations he has, but he has enough to identify you as someone with access to sensitive client information.”
