I was polite. “Thank you for being here. Anya needs consistency. I trust you’ll provide it.” Standard, nothing remarkable. The woman recoiled as if I’d just announced her funeral.
I’ve been told I’m intimidating, Alexei says it’s the eyes, inherited from my father. Mikhail says it’s the way I stand when I enter a room. Dmitri… has said nothing on the subject. Whatever it is, I’ve learned that my presence destabilizes people, and the last thing Anya needs is another tutor scared into resigning because of me.
So, I stay away, working from the city and in my office late at night, after Elizabeth has retired to her room. I leave early, before she comes down for breakfast. We exist in the same house without existing in the same space, and I tell myself this is strategy, not avoidance.
And I watch.
Monday.
The first lesson.
I have a 9:00 a.m. call with Yuri about the port logistics, a 10:30 with the construction foreman on Randolph, and a noon briefing with Alexei on the Albanian countermeasures. The security feed is open on my phone. I check it between meetings. A glance. Two seconds. Standard monitoring.
I check fourteen times before noon.
Camera six in the sunroom, where Mikhail told me Elizabeth would be conducting lessons. The wide angle shows the full room: the windows, the table, and the art supplies she’s arranged. And two figures. One small, guarded, with her arms crossed. The other sits across from her, drawing and talking. Her mouth moves as her hands gesture.
I can’t hear what she’s saying. This bothers me more than it should.
After twenty minutes, Anya uncrosses her arms. I note the time: 9:23 a.m. After thirty, she picks up a pencil, and by the end of the hour, they’re both drawing at the same table, not speaking, or maybe speaking, I can’t tell. The silence of visual-only surveillance is its own kind of torment, but Anya isn’t retreating.
Closing the feed, I open the Albanian file and start reading. Three lines are the most I manage before I toss it aside and pick up my phone.
9:58 a.m. Anya is holding up her sketchbook for Elizabeth to see. Elizabeth leans forward, and I see her face now. The secondary camera, camera seven, catches her from a different angle, closer, and the resolution at this distance shows me what the living room footage couldn’t.
I watch her mouth form words I can’t hear and observe how her face changes from animated to soft, then surprised. Whatever Anya is showing her, it’s landed somewhere genuine.
I close the feed, count to sixty, and open it again.
This is not standard monitoring.
Tuesday.
Elizabeth reads to Anya. I see her mouth moving, her hands gesturing, her body performing the story rather than merely reading it. She uses her whole self: her face changes with the characters, her hands become props, and her posture shifts. Even without audio, I see the rhythm of it, the cadence, the way she pauses, waits, and lets the silence do its work.
Anya watches. Her eyes follow Elizabeth’s hands; her small body is oriented toward her, not away. The rabbit is in her lap, not clutched against her chest.
I switch cameras. Elizabeth’s face fills more of the frame. Oblivious to the camera, she’s entirely focused on Anya, and her face in this unguarded state is different from the face in her agency headshot.
The professional mask she wears in the corridors, with a competent smile and a straight posture, is gone. What’s hidden below is warmer.
She’s stunning.
That thought again. Uninvited and persistent.
I close the feed and don’t reopen it for twenty-seven minutes. A new record of restraint.
Wednesday.
Alexei delivers the report at 8:00 a.m.
“Intel on Landon Webb,” he says, setting the folder on my desk. I skip the description of the business that was alreadyincluded in Mikhail’s file on Elizabeth and move to the important part.
“Targeting low-income communities. Two enforcement teams for collections, both staffed with ex-cons, both known for escalating to physical intimidation when payments are late,” Alexei informs me.
Webb’s operation is midsized but well-connected. He doesn’t work in isolation, and his network extends into the western suburbs through a lending syndicate that shares infrastructure with several operations we’ve been monitoring for months. Not Albanian, he’s not directly connected to Dushku. But adjacent. Close enough that the circles overlap in ways that bear watching.
I turn to the client profiles. Calloway’s entry is the largest outstanding balance in Webb’s portfolio. $478,540. Held separately from the syndicate’s books.
