Page 21 of The Last Dance

When we reached the gates of my estate, the guards waved us through without question. The driveway to the mansion was long enough for a meditation, so I used the time.

I thought about the tail, about whether it was a threat to me or to the boy. Either way, the outcome was already decided. The only variable was how many people would have to disappear before I was satisfied.

I glanced at Yuri in the mirror. “Pull footage on the tail. Full sweep. If it’s business, eliminate. If it’s personal, bring them in. I want to know which it is.”

“Understood,” he said.

The car glided to a stop in front of the mansion. I waited for Yuri to get out, then opened the door myself, lifting Iren’s weight with one arm and carrying him inside. The night was cold enough that my breath steamed, but Iren radiated heat through the fabric of his shirt.

The transition from bulletproof car to mansion always reminded me of why I built my life the way I did: every threshold crossed, every footstep on imported stone, a reinforcement that there was nowhere safer on earth than inside my own walls.

The air inside the house was just above freezing, conditioned to stifle mold and bacteria, but it felt warm compared to the taste of city night still clinging to the back of my throat.

I carried Iren through the vestibule and up the marble staircase, his head lolling against my chest, the rest of him deadweight and pliant in a way that only true exhaustion produces.

The hallway to the master suite was a long corridor, the kind designed to showcase art and to discourage loitering by the kind of help who can’t mind their business.

The staff—my butler Lin at the entry, one night guard at his post, the rest already dismissed for the night—knew better than to meet my eye, let alone comment on the bundle in my arms.

I felt their curiosity anyway, a brush of charged air against my skin, but none would dare.

Inside the master suite, I laid Iren out on the silk sheets, which were navy and almost as dark as the bruises along his spine. He sprawled, boneless, the way a person collapses when there’s no one left to impress.

The room was designed for intimidation and comfort in equal measure: a king bed big enough for four, sheets so fine they caught on the calluses of my hands, heavy dark furniture that had to be moved in with a crane.

A gas fireplace, recessed and glass-fronted, ran the length of the wall opposite the bed. French doors opened onto a terrace overlooking the grounds. Everything was positioned for maximum control, minimum vulnerability.

I looked at the space as I stripped Iren down to bare skin, peeling sweat-soaked tank and mesh shorts with the care of a surgeon working in a war zone. I wiped him down with a damp cloth, catching every stripe of blood and sweat, then used the soft edge of a towel to dry him off.

He didn’t wake, didn’t stir, even when I rolled him to his side to check the marks on his back. It was a familiar kind of trust, the trust of an animal that knows it won’t be eaten before morning.

I tucked the sheet around him, smoothing the fabric across his shoulders, and let my palm rest there a beat longer than necessary. The effect was immediate. Iren shifted, unconsciously, curling into the pressure. His breathing deepened.

I stood back and looked at him, spread out on my sheets, his hair a tangled mess on the pillow and his face finally free of the defenses he wore like armor. I wanted to climb in with him, immediately, but years of habit and a cocktail of adrenaline and something else wouldn’t let me.

Yuri knocked once at the door.

“Report,” I said.

He entered, glancing at the boy on the bed, then back to me. “No sign of a second tail. The car is registered to a shell in the city. Two hours ago it was parked in a church lot. The driver matches the build of the Tuesday regular. The Deacon.”

“Parsons,” I said.

Yuri nodded.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “Bring me everything. Then bring me him.”

Yuri inclined his head and left.

I turned back to the bed. Iren had not moved. The hand that had been clutching my lapel now fisted the sheet instead. I stood there a long time, watching him. Wanting, in a way that was entirely new and entirely unwelcome. Wanting not to own, but to keep.

I did not analyze it. I did not diagnose it. Some things were better left unnamed. For the first time in a long time, I had something to protect.

And I was already counting the bodies it would take to keep it.

I stripped in the bathroom, dropping my suit in a pile on the marble. The shower was a glass box with triple-jet fixtures, hot water calibrated to the degree. I stepped in and let the heat burn the grime from my skin. The bruises on my hips and thighs, souvenirs from earlier, bloomed fresh under the spray.

I watched the water bead and run down my forearms, washing pink in the basin before swirling away. The urge to go back into the bedroom was so strong it was a physical ache in my gut, but I forced myself to finish the routine: scrub, rinse, repeat.