I’m aware that allowing it to mean anything at all is tactically inadvisable. Yet, I’m doing it anyway.
What I’m also doing is managing the guilt of Sunday night, which is not an emotion I have extensive practice with.
Guilt, as a category, requires caring about the outcome you failed to prevent, and I’ve spent fifteen years curating a professional life in which I don’t get attached to outcomes beyond the operational. The system works because it’s clean.
The only exception is my daughter. But I’ve learned to live with that, to work around it.
This feeling with Elizabeth is different.
I made a mistake the other week. I broke formation andnearly died. All becausemy girlswere more important to me than any strategy.
The consequences of that mistake are more than physical, more than the ache I still carry in my skull or the raised wounds on my flesh. But I can’t let that slow me down. I can’t let any of it get in the way. Not again. So, I push forward.
Dushku won’t wait. He moved once and failed. Failure will either make him cautious or desperate.
In my experience, men like Dushku, men whose power is tribal and whose identity is inseparable from their reputation — they become desperate. He’ll regroup and try again. Next time, he’ll hit harder.
I need to take this out of his hands before that happens, which means I need to go to him rather than wait for him to come to me again.
That means leaving Anya… and Elizabeth.
But she’ll be here when I return. The contract ensures it.
I make the call while Alexei is reviewing the logistics. The jeweler answers on the second ring. He’s been on my list for seven years, rarely used.
“I need you here in an hour,” I say. “Bring options.”
He brings five.
He’s good at his work. I gave him almost nothing, just the basics about her: dark hair, hazel eyes, warm undertones in her skin. He also received implicit instruction that whatever he brings should be worth looking at. He spreads them out on my desk, and I study them.
The emeralds are obvious, but beautiful. Green would enhance those gorgeous eyes. I know without needing to deliberate that these are the ones. A collar that sits at the base of the throat, modest in proportion, not overwhelming. Earrings to match.
Still, I keep all five sets. Two sets of diamonds, the alexandritethat comes with a bracelet, and the ruby with gold hardware, which I find rather extravagant but accept anyway.
I take the emeralds upstairs.
She’s on the bed, as I expected.
Sunday means no lessons. This is her own time, though lesson plans lie spread across a significant portion of the available surface area, and she’s lying in the middle of them with a focused expression.
She glances up when I walk in, face shifting as her guard slips back into place.
Deserved.
I approach the bed.
“I have something for you.”
She eyes me suspiciously. Also deserved. “What do you mean?”
I produce the velvet box from behind my back and hold it out.
She takes it slowly and opens it.
I watch her face.
What I expected: a smile.
