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ARTEM

Dmitri calls two days after the hug, after Harper’s shoulders finally stopped shaking against my chest, and I almost let it go to voicemail before I recognized the number.

It’s been a quiet two days, Harper spending more time out of her room than she has since the first week, and some part of me had let itself believe the quiet might hold a little longer than this.

He runs a shipping operation out of the port, technically neutral, though everyone in this business knows neutral is just a word people use until it stops being useful.

I’ve done him enough favors over the years that he still returns my calls, and he’s done me enough that I still answer his, a balance neither of us has ever bothered keeping strict count of, an old kind of trust that’s survived longer than most alliances in this line of work tend to.

“You’ve got something moving through the Sokolov side,” he says, no greeting. “Word’s traveling that you’re keeping a woman somewhere—someone you’re protecting. That’s the phrasing I keep hearing, more than once now.”

I keep my voice level, giving him nothing to read off of. “Where’s this coming from?”

“Doesn’t matter where it started. Matters that it reached them.” A pause, papers shuffling somewhere on his end. “They don’t have a name. Don’t have a face. Just that she exists, and that you’re the one keeping her contained.”

“Contained.”

“That’s the word going around. Not staying with you. Contained.” He lets that sit for a second, like he already knows exactly what that word does to a man in my position. “You know how that reads to them better than I do.”

I do. Contained isn’t a word people use about a girlfriend or a mistress kept quiet for appearances. Contained is a word for something valuable enough to lock down, dangerous enough to need controlling, or both. Either read makes her worth a second look to people who’ve spent years looking for any crack in my operation wide enough to use.

“Anything else?”

“Not yet. But you know how the Sokolovs work. They’ll sit on this until they’ve got more, then move all at once.” Another pause. “Watch your people, Artem. This kind of thing doesn’t travel on its own. Someone’s talking, whether they mean to or not.”

He hangs up before I can ask anything further, which tells me he’s already said more than he was comfortable saying.

I sit with the phone in my hand for a long moment after the call ends, running through everyone who’s had access to this house since the night I brought her here. Yuri, obviously not; his loyalty isn’t in question and never has been, not after fifteen years of watching him choose this operation over easier, safer paths more than once.

Marek and the rest of the security detail, all vetted, all men I’ve trusted with worse secrets than this one, men who’ve had every opportunity over the years to sell me out for a better offer and never once taken it.

The kitchen staff, rotating in and out on a schedule I’ve never fully memorized because I never had reason to, faces I recognize without always knowing names, a blind spot I’m only now realizing I’ve let stand for far too long.

Nadia.

I don’t want to land there, but I make myself sit with it instead of dismissing it out of hand the way some part of me wants to. She’s had access to every corner of this house for longer than anyone else on staff, knows the rhythms of it better than I do most days, and she’s made no secret of how she feels about Harper being here, even if she’s kept most of that feeling below the surface where I can pretend not to see it.

Resentment doesn’t automatically mean betrayal.

I think through the building itself too: the doorman, the front desk staff, anyone who might have clocked a woman moving out of 12A and never seen her walking back out through the lobby again. That’s a slower leak, the kind that spreads through casual mention rather than deliberate betrayal, someone noticing something odd and saying it to the wrong person over drinks without any intent behind it at all.

Those leaks are almost worse, because no one person is responsible.

None of it points anywhere solid yet. What I do know is what contained means to people who’ve spent a decade waiting for a reason to move against me.

It means I’m protecting something I can’t afford to lose, which makes it something worth taking from me. It means whoever she is, whatever she actually is to me, she’s now a lever they’ll want to find and pull the second they’ve confirmed enough to justify the risk.

I pull up the surveillance feed instead of picking up the phone again.

Twelve boxes fill the screen, one for every camera in this house, and I sit there watching them do nothing in particular.

The kitchen staff clearing the last of dinner. Marek at his post by the east door. The doorman’s replacement checking his phone in the lobby, quick, then pocketing it before anyone walks by.

Harper’s in the corner box, curled into the window seat in her room, knees pulled up, some book open against her thighs that she isn’t really reading. She hasn’t turned a page in the last four minutes. I’ve counted.

Any one of these people could be the reason a name reached the wrong ears. I know that. Whoever it turns out to be, they’ll find out what that costs them.

I call Marek and tell him to double the rotation on the east and south perimeters starting tonight, quietly, no explanation given to the rest of the staff beyond a routine security review. I tell him to check anyone who’s left the property in the last month, anyone who’s had visitors, anyone whose behavior reads even slightly off from their usual pattern. No detail is too small to flag.