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I glance at my daughter.

“That description doesn’t suggest she was completely fine, solnyshko.”

Anya ignores the correction and reaches for the unconscious woman’s hand. “Elle told me she wasn’t going to die,” Anya says, looking deeply troubled by the possibility that Elle may have lied to her. “She said she strongly preferred not to.”

I look at Kirill.

For some reason, he looks as though he is suppressing something.

“Who is Elle?”

“Elara Bennett,” Kirill says. “She prefers Elle.”

I look back at the woman.

Elara Bennett.

The name means nothing to me.

It should.

Anyone brought inside this house should already have been identified, investigated, and cleared before crossing the front door.

Instead, there’s a bleeding stranger lying on my sofa while my daughter refuses to release her hand.

I turn toward Kirill.

“Start at the beginning, and this time I want every detail, including how my daughter ended up standing in front of a moving car while you were responsible for her security,” I say.

The room becomes considerably quieter.

Kirill meets my eyes without looking away, which is one of the reasons he has worked for me as long as he has. “The school dismissal proceeded normally until I received a call from the secondary vehicle regarding a problem at the western exit, and while I was dealing with it, Anya moved several meters away from me,” Kirill explains. “I saw her step toward the drive, but by the time I started toward her, a black sedan had already come around the eastern curve at a speed that was completely inconsistent with school traffic.”

“How many meters?”

Kirill pauses. “Approximately six.”

I let the silence sit between us for a moment. “You allowed my eight-year-old daughter to put six meters between herself and the man whose sole responsibility is ensuring that nobody gets close enough to harm her.”

“Yes,” Kirill says without trying to soften the answer. “It was my mistake, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.”

Anya immediately looks up from Elle. “Papa, it wasn’t Kirill’s fault because I walked away when I wasn’t supposed to, and then he shouted for me, but I got scared and looked at him instead of looking at the car.”

The words settle heavily in my stomach.

I move toward her and crouch so that we are at eye level.

There is dirt on her tights and a scrape over one knee, but I have already looked her over twice since entering the room and found nothing else.

Still, I put my hands around her face again.

“Listen to me carefully, Anya. You made a mistake by walking away from Kirill, and we will discuss that later, but what happened with that vehicle is not your responsibility.”

Her gray eyes immediately fill with tears. “But Elle got hurt because she came to get me.”

“I know.”

“She ran really fast, Papa, and then she grabbed me and pushed me away, but she didn’t get out of the way fast enough, and the car hit her instead.”