I click it open and start typing. The layout of The Foundry, as much as I've mapped from my tour and my wandering yesterday. Names mentioned in passing. Notes on Scarlet Thorn and the wish system and the men who control it all.
Insurance. Just in case.
Just in case of what, I still can't bring myself to examine.
I create a new document inside the folder.
ASSET ASSESSMENT: KONSTANTIN VETROV
Background: Bratva-connected. Primary enforcer for Red Letter Syndicate. Handles "problem resolution" and high-risk acquisitions. Body count unknown but presumed significant.
Physical: Approximately 6'3", heavily muscled. Extensive tattoo work, primarily barbed wire motif with roses. Multiple scars indicating historical trauma.
Behavioral observations: Controlled. Economical with words and movement. Predator-like stillness when focused. Cooks as apparent coping mechanism. Maintains rooftop garden. Shows unexpected tenderness in private moments.
Assessment:
My fingers hover over the keyboard.
I should write something clinical. Professional. Something that doesn't reveal how thoroughly this man has gotten under my skin in four days.
I type:Subject is more dangerous than anticipated. He's violent when needed and infuriatingly calm under pressure. Admitted killer.
My fingers freeze over the keys. The cursor blinks at the end of the sentence, patient, waiting for me to finish the thought I'm already regretting.
Because that's not what makes him dangerous. Not to me.
I type:Cooks breakfast without being asked. Grows roses on a rooftop in Chicago. Whispered Russian against my skin while I fell apart and held me like I was something worth being careful with.
The words glow on the screen in the dim light of his office, my own handwriting of a confession I never intended to make. The leather of his chair is warm against my back, still carrying the shape of his body, and the whole room smells like old paper and cedar and the fading ghost of what we just did on this desk. My throat tightens.
I stare at the words until they blur.
Damn.
My finger finds the delete key and holds it down, watching the letters disappear one by one, erasing the truth character by character until the cursor blinks alone on an empty line. My chest aches in a way that has nothing to do with the bruises on my hips.
I replace it with something sterile. Something a real journalist would write. Something that doesn't make me sound like a woman falling for her captor four days into captivity.
Further observation required. Will continue gathering intelligence as opportunity allows.
Save. Close.
I shut the laptop and press my palms flat against the cool surface, curling my fingers around the edges until the metal bites into my skin. Outside the office window, the city hums its usual indifferent song. Somewhere down the hall, Kon's low voice rumbles through a phone call in Russian, the words unintelligible but the cadence as familiar to me now as my own heartbeat.
That realization alone should terrify me.
And it does.
I can delete words from a screen. I can bury the truth under clinical language and professional distance and every wall I know how to build. But I can't delete it from my own body.
And my body is still trembling.
Nine
Kon
It’s been three days since I first touched her.
