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“The dish that made her sick was a chicken dish, prepared fresh that night, not part of the regular rotation the kitchen usually runs. Only one person cooked it.” He flips the folder open, a single page inside, handwritten notes in his own hand rather than a typed report. “Nadia prepared it herself, plated it herself, and carried the tray up herself instead.”

I already knew that last part.

“Who else had access to the kitchen that evening?” I keep my voice even, though something in my chest has already started tightening around the answer I expect.

“Just her. Everyone else clocked out by 6:40p.m., and I’ve got the time-stamped badge logs to prove it.” Yuri closes the folder. “I also checked the medicine cabinet in the staff wing this morning. A full bottle of sleeping pills that should be there isn’t, and nobody logged a refill or a reason to have taken it.”

I sit with that for a long moment, running back through everything I know about Nadia, built up over the years without me ever fully questioning it.

The woman who’s run this kitchen since before I bought this house. The woman I slept with more than once, years ago, before either of us called it anything beyond convenient, an arrangement we both let end quietly when it stopped serving either of us.

The woman who’s watched Harper with a coldness I noticed and dismissed as nothing more than staff friction, the kind every large household generates eventually.

I think about the report from Dmitri too, the leak reaching the Sokolovs, the list of possible sources I ran through that night and landed on her name before deliberately setting the thought aside because I didn’t want it to be true. Two separate instincts, both pointing at the same person, and I dismissed both of them for the same reason: some old loyalty getting in the way of the one thing that should’ve mattered more than any of it.

“You should have flagged this sooner,” I say, not to Yuri specifically, more to the man I was three weeks ago who chose not to look harder.

“I flagged what I had. You made the call on how hard to push it.” He doesn’t apologize for that, and he shouldn’t. The failure here is mine, not his.

He watches me for a moment longer, gauging whether I need anything else from him tonight, and when I don’t say anything further, he pulls the door shut behind him on his way out, leaving me alone with the folder and the quiet weight of everything it now confirms.

I find Nadia in the kitchen an hour later, going through her evening routine like nothing about tonight is different from any other.

The radio playing softly against the far wall, the same routine she’s followed every night for as long as I’ve owned this house. She looks up when I walk in, her hands going still against the counter.

“You’re back early.” Her voice comes out light, almost casual, though her eyes are already tracking me too closely for it to be genuine.

“We need to talk.” I close the distance between us slowly, watching her posture change with every step I take, her shoulders drawing up. “About what Harper ate the night she collapsed.”

“I already told the guards what I know. It must have been something that went bad… I don’t know how…”

“Don’t.” My voice comes out flatter than I intend, colder than I’ve used with her in years. “Yuri traced it, and it leads to you.”

Her jaw tightens. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Something’s missing from the medicine cabinet too. Something that would make a person sick if they overdosed on it.” I hold her gaze, unwavering, giving her nothing to work with, no crack in my expression she can read as an opening. “I’m not asking you to explain a coincidence, Nadia. I’m asking you to stop lying to me before this gets worse for you.”

The silence stretches long enough that I think she might actually keep denying it, her hands twisting the dish towel she’s still holding, and then something in her posture breaks all at once, the fight going out of her the way air goes out of a punctured tire.

“I wanted her gone.” The words come out with none of the warmth she usually performs anywhere in her voice now, stripped down to something I’ve genuinely never heard from her before tonight. “Not just gone. I wanted her dead, and I’m not going to pretend I regret trying.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” Her voice cracks on something that might be anger or might be years of swallowed hurt finally surfacing. “I’ve been in this house longer than she’s been here. I watched you look at her the way you never once looked at me, not in all the years I gave you. And you expect me to just stand here and serve her dinner every night like I’m her maid?”

“That’s not a reason. That’s an excuse for attempted murder, and we both know it.”

“Call it whatever you want, then.” She lifts her chin, some last scrap of defiance holding on even now, her eyes wet but her voice steady despite it. “I’d do it again if I thought I could get away with it.”

Something in me goes very quiet, and I don’t fight it this time.

I have the gun out and pointed at her chest before I’ve fully registered pulling it from my waistband. The kitchen goes silent except for the low hum of the refrigerator.

Nadia’s hand flies up, palm out, backing into the counter behind her. The dish towel she’s holding falls to the floor.

“You almost killed her.” Two words at a time, flat, because if I let more than that out at once, I don’t know what comes with it.

The gun’s a foot from her chest. My hand isn’t steady.