Page 34

HARPER

A new guy starts on staff by week’s end. Marek brings him through the kitchen and introduces him quickly, barely more than a name and a handshake. Tomas. Younger than most of the staff, careful with his footing like he’s still learning where the furniture is. Dark hair, average height, with the kind of face that wouldn’t stand out in a crowd of a hundred people.

I don’t think much of him. New people come and go around here, filling gaps that open up whenever someone leaves, and none of them have ever mattered before to a woman who’s already spent weeks learning every hallway and every guard rotation in this place. The house has needed extra hands since Nadia went, more than I expected one person’s absence to leave behind; the daily rhythm of the place shifting in small ways I only notice after the fact.

Marek vouches for him, apparently, with clean references from some agency he’s worked with before. That’s usually enough around here, and I’ve never had reason to question it until now, though I couldn’t tell anyone exactly why this particular week feels different from any other.

I catch him in the east hallway a few days later, holding a stack of white towels outside the wrong linen closet entirely. He jumps when he sees me, just a flicker, gone almost as fast as it shows up.

“Sorry. Wrong hallway, I think.” He holds up the towels like that explains it.

I nod and keep walking without another word. New hires get lost. It happens to everyone their first few weeks, and by the time I’ve turned the corner I’m already half convinced I imagined the jump in the first place, chalking it up to nerves rather than anything worth a second look.

Two days after that, he brings my lunch tray up instead of the usual girl. He sets it down slower than required, eyes drifting around the room while he does it, corner to corner, like he’s counting something rather than just delivering food. The window. The door. The book stacked open on the chair in the corner, the one I never bothered to move.

I notice. I also talk myself out of noticing.

“You settling in okay?” I ask, mostly to fill the space while he lingers by the door a moment longer than he needs to, the tray balanced on one hand.

“Getting there. Big house.” He straightens, glances toward the window, then back at me, the tray still balanced between us. “Guess you’d know that better than anyone, though. Been here a while, right?”

The question lands slightly wrong, more specific than casual small talk usually is, but I answer without thinking twice about it. “About three months now.”

“Must get quiet out here. Just you and Mr. Leonov, way out at the edge of the property like this.”

“Something like that.” I don’t offer more than that, old habit at this point, the same instinct that’s kept me vague and careful with every new face in this house since the very beginning. He nods like that’s what he expected and heads back out, footsteps fading quickly down the hall.

I go back to my food and don’t think much more of it, at least not right away.

That night I lie in bed and replay the conversation.

The questions weren’t strange on their own. People ask how long you’ve lived somewhere all the time. It’s the shape of them that snags, the sense that he already had the answers and was just checking them against what I said.

I try to pin down what exactly felt off, staring up at the ceiling in the dark. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s the pregnancy making me hypervigilant about things that don’t actually deserve the attention, some old instinct running hotter than it needs to, the same instinct that’s kept me checking exits and guard rotations since the very first week I woke up in this house.

I tell myself I’m reading into it. New employees are awkward. That’s all this is, and I roll over and make myself stop thinking about it until sleep finally takes over.

The week moves on quietly after that. I don’t see much of Tomas beyond a nod in passing, nothing that catches the way that first conversation did.

He’s efficient, does his job the way anyone new tries to when they’re still proving themselves worth keeping around, and if he’s watching me the way I half-suspected that first day, he’s careful enough about it now that I don’t catch it again.

I pass him once refilling the pantry, and he doesn’t even look up.

My days have settled into their own rhythm now, mornings in the library, afternoon walks when the weather holds, evenings that increasingly end with Artem staying later than his schedule allows. I’ve started three books this month and finished none of them, and I don’t mind, since there’s no rush anymore, not the way there used to be when every hour felt like something to survive rather than simply live through.

I rest a hand against my stomach sometimes without meaning to, an instinct that’s crept in over the past few weeks.

The baby’s still more idea than fact most days, but the habit’s already there, automatic in a way I haven’t fully examined yet. Artem’s noticed it once or twice over dinner, watching my hand for a second before going back to his plate without comment, and I like that about him lately. He doesn’t make everything a conversation. Some nights that quiet feels like the kindest thing he could possibly offer me.

By Friday, I’ve mostly let the whole thing go. Artem’s got enough on his plate already, still sorting through what’s left after Nadia, still running security checks I only half understand the scope of.

A vague feeling about a new hire’s small talk seems small next to all that, embarrassing even the kind of thing that would make me sound paranoid over nothing, the kind of complaint that would waste time he doesn’t have to spare on something this thin.

I imagine saying it out loud, testing the words in my head before deciding against them. He was strange about the tray. He asked how long I’ve lived here. It sounds thin even in my imagination, the kind of complaint he’d nod along to politely before moving on to something that actually matters more.

I find him in the study that evening, and we talk about nothing important. A book I’m reading. Something Yuri said that almost made him laugh, rare enough that I remember it clearly. He asks if I’ve eaten, and I tell him yes, twice actually, which earns me a look like he doesn’t quite believe me.

“Tomas seems fine,” I say at one point, mostly just testing the words out loud, watching his face for any reaction at all.