Page 69 of The Last Dance

The door opened with a snap that was engineered to sound accidental. Yuri entered, and the temperature in the room dropped a half-degree. He wore the same suit as every day, tie knotted at an angle that told you it was done left-handed and without looking.

He did not bother with the nod to me. He just crossed to Vadim’s desk in three efficient steps, bent down, and murmured something directly into Vadim’s ear.

It was the first time in my life I’d ever seen Vadim caught off guard.

His face moved—just for a fraction of a second, a flicker of surprise that cut across the smooth stone of his features and was erased before the air had a chance to catch it.

I filed the look away, careful as a fingerprint on glass. Vadim did not do surprise. If something could get to him, it meant it was real.

Then his eyes cut across the room to me. He didn’t speak. He didn’t smile. He just crooked two fingers and waited for me to cross the room.

I marked my place in the book, set it on the arm of the chair, and approached with the careful pace of someone who’d learned that when Vadim summoned you, it was either to kill you or make you immortal.

Some days I couldn’t tell the difference.

He pulled me down onto his lap, efficient, the chair squealing in protest at the sudden load. I yelped—too loud, too easy—and he just gripped my hip until I quieted.

From the desk, he picked up a slim remote, pointed it at the wall-mounted television, and turned it on. The screen, already set to a local news channel, resolved into an anchor with the kind of plastic sincerity you could bottle and use as chemical weapon.

Vadim said nothing. He waited until my gaze was fixed to the screen before squeezing my thigh once, firm.

The anchor was already in mid-segment: “…arrested earlier today after police discovered a hidden basement room at a property owned by a shell corporation linked to Dr. Robert Parsons, prominent dentist and deacon at St. Hilary’s. Investigators found a sixteen-year-old boy—name withheld—in what officials are describing as a ‘carefully constructed holding environment,’ complete with food, books, and a locking chain attached to the concrete wall. The boy, physically abused, is now in protective custody…”

The anchor’s voice was a glide path, even as the segment escalated. Cut to B-roll of a nondescript suburban house, then to police tape across a perfectly normal garage. Then back to the desk, where the woman in the power blue suit intoned the word “predator” and let it hang in the air for a beat before continuing.

Vadim watched my face, not the screen.

I watched the screen, not Vadim.

I tried not to breathe.

“—practiced this for years, say law enforcement sources. The room was custom-poured concrete, reinforced, with hardware purchased in small amounts from multiple suppliers to avoid suspicion. Investigators are combing through Dr. Parsons’s financials, dental records, and church activity logs. His wife has retained an attorney. His dental practice has been shuttered—”

I felt my jaw go loose. “Wait,” I said, voice soft as a warning. “That young man. Who is he?”

Vadim answered without inflection. “Someone we hired to play the part you were supposed to have.”

I let that settle. It took a while.

The screen now cycled through local interviews. Parents at the boy’s school, neighbors, a parishioner whose eyes were red-rimmed as she explained how “Dr. Parsons always gave out the best candy at Halloween, we never could have imagined—”

I said, “What happens to the boy?”

“He will be set for life,” Vadim said. “As soon as the cameras are off him, he will be paid. Disappear if he wants. He was never in danger.”

A line from the news ticker caught my eye: “Anonymous tip led to rescue, say police.”

I asked, “You sent the evidence.”

Vadim nodded, just once. “Anonymous tip. A file delivered directly to the chief of police.”

I exhaled, and the air in my chest moved for the first time in two weeks. I had not realized how little of it I’d been holding onto.

I watched Parsons’s world burn in real time. The dental practice, the church, his wife’s name and his children’s school, all of it converted to evidence, to horror, to a lifetime of being the answer to a security question you never wanted to ask.

For a long time I said nothing. Then, quietly, I said, “I thought you were going to take him out.”

Vadim’s mouth curved, not soft, but deep. “I did,” he said. “In the only way that would matter. He will spend the rest of his life locked away the same way he wanted to lock you. If I had killed him, it would have been faster than he deserved. Now he loses everything. His wife, his children, his standing. Now everyone knows what he is.” A pause. “That is not a mercy. That is a sentence.”