Page 46 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

I press my palm flat against my stomach without thinking, then pull it away at once. I don’t do that here.

“Get it together,” I mutter.

I pace once, twice, then stop near the door again. I could lock it. I don’t. If something gets through this house, a locked door won’t matter.

A louder crash echoes from below, closer this time. My chest tightens. I go still and listen harder.

This is his world. And I’m in it now, whether I stay locked behind his door or not. I stand there, listening, waiting, every sense turned outward, and I realize I’m not staying back.

I pull a robe, his, over my dress, ease the door open, and step into the corridor.

The silk under the robe sticks to my skin, sweat from sex and the rush that came after it. I drag the wrap tighter across my chest and press my back to the wall outside Maksim’s suite, listening. Voices carry from downstairs. Feet move fast. Doors open and shut.

The main lights are gone. Emergency lamps burn along the baseboards and at the turns in the hall, enough to show the wood paneling and runner rugs in dull strips. Somewhere below me a siren tries to start, then cuts off halfway through the first pulse.

Someone shut it down by hand.

I take one step, then another, bare feet soundless on the runner. The upper corridor is empty, no staff in sight, no guard at my door, and nobody coming to shove me back inside. That tells me more than the dark does.

I reach the landing window and flatten beside it, then force myself to look.

The drive is lit. The front gates are shut. I can see the front sweep of gravel, the fountain, the first slice of trees beyond the lamps, and there’s no firefight out there. SUVs aren’t tearing up the drive. No men pressing the gates. No muzzle flashes beyond the perimeter. One of the fixed rifles at the front post is still in place.

They didn’t come through the face of the house. Inside hit.

My stomach drops.

Below me, on the ground floor, a burst of automatic fire rattles hard enough to vibrate through the banister. Glass breaks. Someone shouts, “Left side clear. Move.”

Not Russian. The voice is flat on the consonants and clean around the edges. Italian, maybe, or one of those imported men who learn another city just well enough to sell violence in it.

Then another voice answers in Russian, fast and annoyed. “Stairwell. Two men. Go.”

I turn from the window and start down the upper corridor, fast but bent, one hand skimming the wall so I don’t lose the turns. The emergency lights cut the old portraits into pieces. Eyes, uniforms, frames. At the far end of the hall, one of the small red indicators beside a reinforced door blinks three times, goes dark, then glows solid green.

Access override.

My mouth dries. That can only happen if someone inside with clearance triggered it or someone inside gave away how to force the lock without blowing the door.

A pair of men rush across the lower landing below me, visible through the cut of the stairs. Black tactical clothing. Suppressed rifles. One of them wears an earpiece with the wire taped close against his neck. No house insignia. Not one of ours. The other carries a tablet in one hand.

“Feeds are looped for ninety seconds,” the man with the tablet says. He isn’t Italian. He moves through the service hall like he’s worked these routes before. “After that we lose the east side.”

“Take the legal room first.”

I stop so fast my heel slips on the runner. Legal room. They came for paper, for proof, for chains of ownership, and they knew exactly where to go.

A body slams into the wall below. One of the house guards goes down the last three steps on his back, rifle gone, blood running from his throat. The man with the tablet steps over him without looking. I back away from the stairs before either of them tilts his head up.

I need cover, not speed. The upper floor feeds into three routes—the main staircase, the side stairs near the east corridor, and the servants’ back run that drops toward the pantry and kitchen. If the legal room is the target, the side stairs are bad ground. If the control room has been compromised, the main hall is worse.

Kitchen.

I turn toward the rear corridor and almost collide with a maid coming the other way.

She gasps and clamps both hands over her mouth before the sound can get bigger. Her apron is twisted, one strap half off her shoulder, and there’s blood on one cuff that doesn’t look like hers. Lidiya.

“Miss,” she whispers hoarsely.