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Viktor gives me a look that says we both know this stopped being only that.

I hate him a little for it.

Then he glances toward the staircase, where Anya’s voice carries up faintly from below. “She likes you,” he says.

“Anya?”

“Yes.”

“I like her too.”

“I know.” His voice is gentler now. “That’s why I’m telling you the truth.”

“Are you?”

“Some of it.”

I laugh once, but it has no humor in it. “Comforting.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

He pushes away from the wall. “I’ll tell Anya I found you.”

“I wasn’t lost.”

“No,” he says, glancing once at Sofia’s photograph. “But you are in the middle of something you don’t understand yet.”

Then he walks away.

I stand there for a while after he leaves, staring at Sofia’s smile, at Anya’s little hand caught midair, at Nikolai standing behind them like a man trying to keep the whole world from reaching what belonged to him.

My phone buzzes in my pocket.

I flinch before I can stop myself. Only an email.

Still, my hand shakes when I lock the screen.

I look toward Nikolai’s study, then toward the stairs where Anya is waiting, then back at the photographs.

This was supposed to be temporary. A strange job in a rich man’s house. A safe place to recover.

Instead, I am surrounded by guards, secrets, old family power, a dead wife no one wants to talk about, a child I am already too attached to, and a man I should be afraid of but cannot stop wanting.

What have I gotten myself into?

13

NIKOLAI

Sergei places the tablet on my desk and turns it toward me. “This is from the service corridor outside the west garden entrance,” he says. “It’s the nearest working angle we have.”

I look at the screen.

The footage is poor. The camera sits too high, meant to watch the corridor, not the pool terrace beyond it. It catches the staff door, part of the stone path, and a narrow strip of garden through the glass.

That camera, conveniently, gave us nine minutes of nothing.

Sergei presses play.