Page 8 of Fake Marriage Mafia Triplets

Dorian raised me never to depend on a man’s protection, and Celine reinforced that lesson by proving that depending on anyone gives them permission to take what they want. Sitting across from Nikita Rusakov and calculating that cooperation is my safest option goes against every survival rule I’ve ever followed.

He has enough power to punish me and has chosen information instead. His restraint gives me room to cooperate, and cooperation offers better odds than resistance.

Nikita turns the Gideon report toward me. “You need to tell me everything Maren knows about this broker.”

I stop calculating how to escape this mansion and start calculating how useful I need to become to the man sitting across from me.

4

NIKITA

Mila Ermakova arrives first, through the garden entrance, carrying her medical bag and a thermos of coffee she must have brewed before dawn. Platon let her in himself and walked her through, because Mila is the one person outside this circle he trusts with a key and a code, and she’s already examined the guest room medicine cabinet by the time I come downstairs. Her assessment is characteristically blunt.

“Your guest room has expired aspirin and a blood-pressure monitor with dead batteries,” she says. “If anyone gets hurt today, I’m working with my bag and whatever antiseptic your kitchen stocks.”

Platon comes through the service entrance off the kitchen ten minutes later, carrying a laptop bag and a file box. He’s been running traces from his rented property since five this morning, and the circles under his eyes confirm it.

“Vera’s coming through the east gate in twenty minutes,” he says, setting the file box on the counter. “I staggered the arrival times so nobody driving past sees three cars at a house that’s been empty for four years. Angelina’s parking on the service road and walking in through the side path.” He watches me for the objection I made last night, when I told him to keep my sister at the cottage until the threat was scoped. “The overnight sweep came back clean. You cleared her yourself this morning, or I wouldn’t have called her.”

I grunt. “What about Adrian?”

“He confirmed thirty minutes ago. He’s driving from the city and using the north entrance off the access lane. His arrival’s timed forty minutes after Vera’s.” Platon checks his phone. “I put a camera on the estate road the night the crest photos surfaced. No unusual traffic since, but that changes if we’re sloppy about this.”

The staggering matters. Shilov watches dormant Rusakov assets, and the Water Mill property is one of them. Three vehicles arriving simultaneously at a mansion the world thinks is empty would register on any surveillance network running automated plate recognition along the estate roads. Even staggered arrivals carry risk if the cars stay too long or park visibly from the road.

“How long can they stay?” I ask.

“Give it two hours at the most. After that, I want the cars moved to the service lot behind the garden wall and the estate gates reset to their normal pattern.”

Piper sits in the study where I left her, reviewing the Gideon broker file Platon compiled this morning. She changed into a gray sweater and pulled her hair back from her face, and she appears less polished than she did last night in her black cashmere and pearls. I shut down that observation hard and focus on logistics.

“They’ll all have opinions about her,” Platon says from behind me, keeping his voice low enough that Piper can’t hear through the closed study door. “Vera will want her gone. Angelina will want answers about you, not her. Adrian will want the legal exposure contained.”

“I know what they’ll want.”

“Do you know what you want?” He holds my gaze for a beat longer than necessary. “The woman in that study has been here less than twenty-four hours, and you’re already treating her like she belongs in the room when we make decisions.”

“She has information we need.”

“She does.” Platon picks up his laptop bag. “That wasn’t my question, and you know it wasn’t, which is why you answered the easy one.”

He walks toward the dining room to set up before I can tell him he’s wrong, which is convenient, because I don’t like to lie to my friend and avtoritet.

Vera Belousova arrives exactly on time. She’s never been late for anything in all the years I’ve known her. She’s dressed in a dark wool coat and low heels, and she surveys the foyer like a general inspecting a garrison that’s been left unsupervised. She ran this household when Mama was alive, held it together after Mama died, and kept the entire family network functioning through the four years I spent underground.

“The dust alone is a betrayal,” she says, running one finger along the banister. “Nobody who loved this house let it go like this. Whatever the reports claimed, the money that was supposed to keep it didn’t touch these rooms.”

“We’ll get to Adrian’s reports,” I say.

“We’ll get to them now, or I’ll pull his invoices myself.” She removes her coat and drapes it over the chair beside the door. “Where is the woman?”

“She’s in the study.”

“You gave her access to the study.” Vera doesn’t phrase it as a question.

Angelina arrives three minutes later, and she’s carrying an anger I haven’t seen from her before. She’s thinner than she was four years ago, her dark hair is shorter, and the gray eyes she shares with me are harder than I remember. She spent those four years moving between protected locations under identities I chose for her, living a reduced version of freedom that bore no resemblance to the life she’d built for herself before I decided to die.

“You’re alive,” she says.