The footage should reinforce operational detachment. Instead, it tightens something uncomfortable in my chest that feels disturbingly close to guilt.
I close the feed and lean back in my chair, acknowledging what I can no longer deny.
Keeping Diana here protects her from Sartore, but it doesn’t protect her from me.
Chapter Ten - Diana
I spend four days mapping the estate’s patterns before I’m confident enough to move.
The guards rotate on a precise schedule: every four hours, change at 6:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 2:00, 6:00, and 10:00 p.m. again. During the shift transition, there’s a three-minute window when coverage thins near the west wing where Felix’s office sits.
The household staff follows predictable routes—meals delivered at set times, laundry collected Tuesdays and Fridays, cleaning restricted to mornings when I’m supposedly still sleeping.
Felix leaves the estate most weekdays between nine and eleven for meetings I can only guess at. He returns by early evening, usually going straight to his office before eventually appearing in the hallway outside my room with that controlled expression that gives away nothing.
They underestimate me. Everyone here does, except maybe Felix.
That’s the advantage I’m counting on.
Thursday morning, I watch from my bedroom window as Felix’s black SUV pulls through the front gates and disappears down the tree-lined drive. Oleg is with him, which means the secondary security team is running operations inside.
I wait fifteen minutes to be sure, then slip into the hallway wearing jeans and a sweater that blend into the background. The guard stationed outside my door—a younger man named Anton—barely glances up from his phone.
“Going downstairs,” I say casually, like I’ve done this a dozen times.
He nods without stopping me.
The main level is quiet except for kitchen sounds filtering from the back of the house. I move through the foyer toward the west wing, keeping my steps measured and purposeful. Looking like you belong somewhere is half the battle; Ethan taught me that years ago during an undercover interview at a political fundraiser.
The security console sits unattended during the shift change, exactly as I predicted. A small tray beside the monitor holds three access cards, each tagged with different clearance levels. I palm the one labeled “Administrative West Wing” and keep walking.
Felix’s office door is at the end of the hallway, heavy wood with a biometric scanner I can’t bypass. I’ve watched him unlock it enough times through the security camera feeds to know he doesn’t always engage the full lock when he leaves in a hurry.
I press the stolen keycard to the scanner and hold my breath.
The light blinks green. The lock disengages with a soft click, and I’m inside before I can second-guess the decision.
The office is exactly what I expected—minimalist, precise, designed for function rather than comfort. A large desk dominates the center, dual monitors positioned at precise angles, filing cabinets lining the wall behind it. Everything is organized with the kind of obsessive control that mirrors the man who works here.
I move to the desk, hands shaking slightly as I try the drawer handles. Locked, all of them. The monitors are still active, screen savers displaying abstract patterns that suggest the terminals are in sleep mode rather than fully powered down.
I touch the mouse on the left monitor. The screen wakes immediately, no password prompt.
He left it unlocked.
Either he didn’t expect anyone to breach his office, or he’s confident enough in the estate’s security that casual mistakes don’t matter. Either way, I’m not wasting the opportunity.
The desktop shows folders organized by coded labels—alphanumeric sequences that mean nothing to me. I click through systematically, scanning file names and trying to identify anything that references Ethan or me.
The third folder contains encrypted communications routed through a secure messaging platform I don’t recognize. The interface is sleek and professional, tagged with symbols I’ve seen before in Ethan’s research files.
I scroll through message threads, pulse hammering in my throat. Most of it is coded language about logistics and timelines, nothing explicitly incriminating without context. But then I find a subfolder labeled “Containment: Clarke.”
My hand freezes on the mouse. I click it open.
Inside are documents spanning eighteen months—email exchanges, surveillance reports, risk assessments. The earliest file is dated three weeks before Ethan’s death. Subject line: “Clarke Investigation, Escalation Protocol.”
I open it.
