Page 24

I’ve gone through Marek’s report twice now, cross-referencing employment dates against every mention of the household that Dmitri’s contact could trace, and nothing lines up cleanly.

Whoever talked, they weren’t sloppy enough to leave an obvious trail, which means either they’re better at this than the rest of my staff, or the leak happened somewhere I haven’t thought to look yet.

I’ve started to wonder if it wasn’t intentional at all. Maybe just someone talking too freely to the wrong person without realizing what they were handing over.

Yuri’s spent most of the week running background checks a second and third time on the security detail, coming up with nothing beyond what we already knew. I’ve had the front desk records from the building pulled again, checking every name that’s touched a key card assignment in the last three months. Still nothing.

It’s the kind of grinding, thankless work that eats entire days without producing a single usable answer, and by the time evening rolls around most days, I’ve got nothing to show for it except a headache and a longer list of people I’ve ruled out rather than one person I can actually act on.

I’ve started keeping a separate list now, names crossed off in one color, names still open in another, and the crossed-off column has grown steadily longer over three days while the open one has barely moved at all.

Somewhere in that gap between the two lists is the answer I need, and I can’t shake the feeling that it’s sitting in plain view, close enough that I’m walking past it every day without recognizing what I’m looking at.

I catch pieces of the house around me without fully processing them. Nadia’s voice, sharper than usual, cutting through the kitchen at Harper over something I don’t catch the specifics of, gone before I’ve fully registered it as anything worth stopping for.

One of the junior staff mentioning, almost in passing, that Nadia’s been harder to work alongside lately, moodier, quicker to snap over small things that never used to bother her. I hear it. I don’t chase it. There are a dozen small frictions in a house this size on any given week, and none of them feel urgent enough to pull my focus off the one thing that actually is.

I make a mental note to check in with her at some point, the way I’d note anything else that needs attention eventually but not immediately, and the note gets buried within the hour under everything else demanding a faster answer.

Tonight, the calls stack up worse than usual. A contact in the port authority who needs reassurance that the increased security around my properties isn’t going to complicate an arrangement we’ve had running smoothly for years, a conversation that takes twice as long as it should because the man on the other end wants to hear the same reassurance phrased three different ways before he’ll accept it.

A conversation with Yuri about rerouting two of our regular shipments through a different route, just in case whoever’s watching this house has started watching more than that. It’s a decision that means notifying four separate contacts and adjusting timing across two different ports before morning.

A call I’ve been putting off for two days with an associate who wants answers about why I’ve suddenly gone quiet on a deal that used to move faster than this, and who isn’t going to accept vague reassurance the way the port authority contact will.

By the time I glance at the clock, it’s past seven, and I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and I still have at least two more calls left before I can reasonably call it a night, a night that’s already stretched longer than any of the last three.

Nadia appears in the study doorway around then, dish towel still over one shoulder. “Dinner’s ready. You eating down here or should I send something up?”

“Send it up here.” I don’t look up from the report in front of me, half my attention already fixed on the next call I still need to make tonight. “And have someone take a tray to Harper’s room too.”

“Of course.” A pause, brief enough that I barely register it. “I’ll take hers up myself.”

“Fine.” It registers somewhere at the edge of my attention as slightly unusual, since kitchen staff typically handle these deliveries themselves while Nadia stays with whatever’s still on the stove, but it’s a small enough oddity that it doesn’t hold my focus for more than a second.

Maybe she wants an excuse to step away from the kitchen for a few minutes. Maybe it’s nothing at all.

She lingers in the doorway a moment longer than the conversation requires, and I glance up briefly, catching something unreadable in her expression before it smooths back into the usual efficient calm she carries around this house.

I don’t ask what it is. I’ve got two more calls waiting, and a report I still haven’t finished cross-referencing, and whatever’s sitting behind her expression isn’t the fire I need to be putting out tonight, not when there’s a much bigger one I still haven’t managed to locate the source of.

“I’ll bring yours up in a few minutes,” she says, and turns without waiting for a response, footsteps quick and even down the hall toward the kitchen, the sound fading fast into the general hum of the house settling into evening.

I go back to the report in front of me, and by the time my own tray arrives twenty minutes later, I’ve already forgotten the exchange entirely.

The port authority call runs longer than I expect, the man on the other end wanting more reassurance than the situation actually warrants, and by the time I hang up, my food’s gone cold on the desk in front of me, untouched. I eat it anyway, still running through the shipment reroute in my head, turning over names I’ve already cleared once and am starting to wonder if I need to clear again with fresh eyes.

Yuri calls back around nine with an update on the reroute, and we spend another twenty minutes going over the details, adjusting timing, making sure nothing about the change looks abrupt enough to draw attention from anyone watching.

By the time that call ends, the house around me has gone properly quiet, staff finished with their evening rounds,

I lean back in my chair and run a hand over my face, the day finally catching up to me. Three days of work and still no answer on the leak. A stack of shipments rerouted on instinct more than confirmed threat. And somewhere upstairs, Harper eating dinner alone in her room.

I think about heading up there anyway, if even just to check on her before the night’s fully gone, and glance at the clock instead, calculating whether twenty minutes now costs me more tomorrow than it’s worth.

It’s a calculation I’ve made a hundred times about a hundred other things, and tonight it comes out the same way it usually does, the work winning out over the instinct the way it almost always has for as long as I can remember. I stay where I am.

I tell myself I’ll make it up to her tomorrow, that tonight was simply one of those nights the work doesn’t allow for anything else, and the thought settles easily enough that I don’t examine it any further, filed away with the rest of the small compromises this week has already cost me.