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“You always do this.”

“Do what?”

“Take the final decision before anyone else gets a vote.”

“I’m not running a committee.”

“No.” Her voice turns colder. “You’re running a graveyard.”

That one reaches me.

I let it.

She waits for anger, but I give her none. After a moment, she gathers her laptop and folders.

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere I don’t have to look at you.”

Normally, I would stop her. Normally, I would remind her about security, tell her where she can go, send someone after her whether she wanted it or not.

Instead, I watch her walk toward the door. Her hand closes around the handle. She pauses once but does not look back. Then she leaves.

For the first time since Elena entered my life, I let her walk away from me without following. The door closes behind her. Karras lies dead beside the table, blood spreading slowly across the floor, and I stare at the space where Elena was standing.

I know why I killed him. I know the network would have cut him loose. I know waiting would have created risk for almost no return. Every part of the decision makes sense.

That should be enough. It always has been. But when I look at the closed door Elena just walked through, certainty feels far less clean than it used to.

25

Elena

By the time the elevator reaches the lobby, I am still furious enough to feel it in my teeth.

One of Adrianos's men falls into step behind me as I cross the marble floor, but I don't tell him to disappear. I agreed to security. Being angry with Adrianos doesn't make the people behind OB6 less dangerous, and I refuse to confuse independence with stupidity simply because the man upstairs has temporarily made strangulation seem therapeutic.

The driver opens the rear door. "The penthouse, Ms. Markides?"

"My apartment."

He hesitates for perhaps half a second before nodding.

That shouldn't surprise me. Adrianos said I could come and go. He said nobody would prevent me from leaving or change my destination without my agreement. Apparently, unlike Dimitris Karras, the compromise survived longer than an afternoon.

I climb into the car and stare through the window as we pull away. Karras's body keeps appearing in my mind. Not the blood. Not the sound of the gunshot. Not even the moment he realized Adrianos intended to kill him.

His words.

There will be more. New instructions. New contacts. Yet Adrianos shot him.

I know what Adrianos is. I knew before I slept with him, before I started waking beside him, before I learned the particular silence that means he's angry and the almost invisible movement at the corner of his mouth that means he's trying not to smile. I have never confused him with a good man.

That's not why I'm angry.

I'm angry because for one foolish stretch of time, I thought we had become partners.

I found Karras. I reconstructed the transactions. I put nine years of financial movements in front of him and dismantled every lie he tried to hide behind. Then the moment my judgment differed from Adrianos's, mine stopped mattering.