Or he is, but in the way that a general is an administrator. The power in this room is not only corporate.
“Miss Calloway.” His voice is calm. A calm that is worse than anger. “Is there a problem?”
My throat works. I find my voice somewhere at the bottom of a well of panic and haul it back up.
“Anya has a fever,” I say. “It spiked in the last thirty minutes. I can’t find any children’s medicine anywhere in the house. The call button isn’t working. I’m sorry.”
The room is silent. The silver-haired man is still watching me. His smile hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s widened, and that makes the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up. He’s not smiling at me but at the situation.
Rolan speaks to Mikhail in hushed Russian. Three words, maybe four.
Mikhail, who has materialized from somewhere near the wall, nods once and moves toward me.
“Go with him,” Rolan says. His eyes are on mine, and even though he’s not saying anything, I can hear it in my head.Leave this room. Now. Don’t look back.
“Thank you. I’m sorry.”
“Go.”
One word. Not cruel but absolute. The tone of a man who needs me out of this room for reasons I don’t understand but can sense in the sudden, sharp electricity of the air.
Mikhail reaches me. His hand doesn’t touch my elbow but hovers near it, guiding me backward through the archway.
The last thing I see before the corridor swallows us is Rolan, still standing, his eyes fixed on the space where I was.
And the silver-haired man, leaning back in his chair, watching me leave with a smirk that hasn’t wavered and a gaze that follows me like a hand on the back of my neck.
Mikhail walks fast. I almost have to jog to keep up, which is complicated by the socks and the marble floors and the fact that my legs are approximately half the length of his.
“There’s a medical supply room,” he says, not looking at me. His voice is controlled but tight. The tightest I’ve ever heard it. “Third floor, east wing. I should have shown you during orientation. That was an oversight.”
“Mikhail, I’m sorry. I know I wasn’t supposed to…”
“You did the right thing.” He says it quickly. “Anya’s health comes first. Always. No instruction overrides that.”
We reach a door I’ve never noticed — recessed, unmarked, between two paintings I’ve walked past a dozen times without looking closely enough. He opens it, and inside there’s a fully stocked medical supply room. Children’s ibuprofen, children’s Tylenol, a digital thermometer, a blood pressure cuff, bandages, gauze, an EpiPen, and approximately fifteen other items that suggest this household has planned for emergencies more serious than a fever.
Mikhail hands me the ibuprofen and the thermometer.
“I should have prepared you better,” he says. Quietly. To himself as much as to me.
“It’s okay. I found it. She’ll be fine.”
He nods. Then, before I turn to leave: “Miss Calloway.”
“Yes?”
“The man at the dinner. The one with the silver hair.”
I wait.
“If he speaks to you — if he approaches you — you come to me immediately. Do you understand?”
Not a suggestion.
“I understand,” I say.
I go back upstairs.
