Page 66 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

“She did that?”

“She also hit one of Karpov’s men with a fire extinguisher.”

I almost laugh, and it scrapes my ribs. “I underestimated her.”

“So did he.”

The estate looks the same from the drive, iron gates, dark trees, floodlights, stone steps, and men posted in clean lines. Inside, powerful men stare at us from the portraits on the stair landing, and the rugs drink our footsteps, but the old rhythm is gone.

Mrs. Wentworth waits near the table with her silver hair pinned tight and her hands folded. A faint bruise yellows near her wrist. Lidiya stands behind her with one sleeve pulled down over what looks like a bandage, and the older house staff line the hall with careful faces and tired eyes.

“Elena,” Mrs. Wentworth says. “I’m pleased to see you standing.”

“Thank you,” I murmur as she pulls a chair for me.

The house works again, but it doesn’t breathe right. Guards check names twice, staff slow at corners, and every door closes hard. Karpov got inside once, and everyone remembers which hall opened for him.

We return to the legal room because trauma doesn’t clear the schedule. Binders cover the table, registry copies sit beside route charts, and old approval packets sit open under the green lamps. Maksim stands at one end with his sleeves rolled up while I trace Sergei’s gaps with a pencil.

“This connects to the fallback company,” I say, tapping the page.

Leonid bends over the paper. “She’s right.”

Maksim’s hand rests on the back of my chair. “Keep going.”

For a while, things get easier between us, or as easy as they can get in a house with armed men at the doors. He tells me more before I have to pull it out of him, and I stop treating every cup of tea like a trap.

Once a week, I get an outing with guards, so I wear the lavender dress I bought earlier and make the trip count. I buy warm rolls and cookies from the bakery, then I make a pretext of stopping at the pharmacy and take out the printout inside my bag to check what I need. Folic acid. The other medicine. I fold the paper back carefully, put it away, and let the pharmacist pack everything without looking at the guards behind me.

On the way back to the estate, I see the cologne Maksim wears in a glass case and buy it before I can talk myself out of it. It feels stupid and personal enough to make me happy, so I tuck it into my handbag instead of the cloth bag with the bread and medicine.

By the time I return, evening has settled over the estate, and I’m late enough that I expect Maksim to be waiting with questions. He isn’t in the legal room. I find him in the estate kitchen with his sleeves pushed up, an apron tied around his middle and a knife in his hand. Only this time, the knife is for vegetables.

He looks up from the mushrooms and stills for a second. “That color suits you,” he says. “It pulls the hazel out of your eyes.”

On the counter are onions, mushrooms, thin strips of beef, sour cream, dill, butter, and buckwheat measured into a bowl. A pot rolls on the stove, and a skillet waits beside it.

“You’re cooking?” I ask from the doorway.

“I’m managing heat, timing, and knives,” he says without looking up.

“That’s cooking.”

“That’s command with vegetables.”

He browns the beef in butter, fast enough to keep it tender, then lifts it out and adds onions and mushrooms to the same pan. The smell fills the kitchen, rich and familiar. He stirs in broth, mustard, black pepper, and sour cream, then folds the beef back through the sauce with dill. The buckwheat steams in another pot, and he fluffs it with a fork before covering it again.

My chest tightens when I understand what he is making. Beef stroganoff, the real kind, the kind I watched on a cooking show one evening.

“How did you know?” I ask.

He sets plates on the table, then adds warm bread wrapped in a towel, pickles in a shallow dish, sliced apples, and two glasses. “You watched it on television. Your face changed when the cook added dill.”

“You noticed that?”

“I notice you.”

He pours vodka for himself, the good kind from a heavy bottle with a label I recognize because Sergei once served it to men he wanted to impress. Then he reaches for my glass, pauses when I cover it with my hand, and looks at me.