“Yes, Pakhan.”
He leaves. The door closes.
Elizabeth’s contract was intentional; every single word built only for her.
I did this because I need her to stay. And I need her to stay because Anya needs her.
I’ve watched what she’s been able to accomplish over the past few weeks.
I can’t risk that. The contract ensures I don’t have to.
As a bonus, the contract also ensures that Elizabeth Calloway remains within my walls. My cameras. My corridors. My proximity.
I could have her. The thought is not new. It’s been circling since the kitchen, growing teeth and gaining mass. I could cross the hallway, knock on her door, and she would open it. I could step inside, close it behind me, and she wouldn’t stop me.
The knowledge that I can is what prevents me from doing it.
And Anya. If I touch Elizabeth and the touching goes wrong, if it becomes tension, awkwardness. And the damagewon’t land on me. It’ll land on a six-year-old girl who drewusat the bottom of a picture and meant it.
So, I don’t. I hold the line and watch through cameras. I stand in hallways and keep distant.
But God, the distance is getting harder every fucking day.
I round the corner on the second floor and she’s there.
Three feet away, coming from Anya’s room with a stack of books balanced against her hip and her hair pulled back in that careless knot. She registers my presence half a second before collision, adjusts her trajectory without breaking stride, and offers me a nod.
Small. Controlled. The kind of nod you give a superior you have to respect but don’t particularly enjoy being near.
“Mr. Belov.”
“Elizabeth.”
And she’s past me. The scent of her shampoo, vanilla, trails behind her.
I stop walking but don’t turn around. I stand in the corridor, and I let the encounter settle, the way I’ve been letting every encounter with her settle for weeks now, each one brief, each one insufficient, each one adding another line to a tally I refuse to examine.
Since the day she walked into my office, she hasn’t smiled at me. Not once.
I notice everything about her. Obsessively.
She smiles at everyone else. Angelina gets the wide, unguarded version, the one that uses her whole face and raises the temperature of the kitchen by several degrees. Mikhail receives a respectful warmth, measured but genuine. Even Dmitri gets one — the one that lives somewhere between a smile and a challenge.
Anya gets all of them. Every variation in her repertoire. The proud smile when Anya solves a problem. The tender one when Anya drifts off to sleep. The startled, delighted version when Anya delivers a deadpan joke with the comedic timing she inherited from me.
She gives me none of them. And even without a single smile directed my way, she is stunning. The absence of warmth doesn’t diminish her.
If anything, the composure she maintains in my presence only sharpens the effect.
She’s punishing me. She won’t argue, won’t confront, won’t give me the satisfaction of a fight I could win. She has simply removed the warmth and left me sitting in the cold, and the strategy is so effective it borders on elegant.
More effective than she knows. More effective than I’d ever admit.
The words I said to her that night still circle, but they haunt me differently than I expected. She should be grateful. The consequence could have been termination. Eviction. Instead, she retains her position, her salary, her room, her relationship with Anya. Restricted movement is a mild sentence. Merciful, even.
But the way I delivered it. Standing too close. Voice dropped to a register I usually reserve for threats. Watching her body respond. The flush climbing her neck, the tremor in her fingers, the sheen of sweat forming at her temples.
I wanted to mark her. I wanted to put my hands on her and leave evidence. Punish her for walking into that dining room. For making Dushku see her. For giving Marcus a reason to speak about her. For being the fault line along which my control fractured.
