Chapter 19 Raphael #2
I wasn’t falling. I was recalibrating. Adjusting the parameters of the arrangement to account for unexpected variables. She was more resilient than I’d anticipated. More perceptive. That was all.
Keep telling yourself that. I’ll be here when you’re ready to admit the truth.
Petrov arrived at noon.
I heard his car pull up the drive, the low rumble of the engine. Heard him exchange words with Parsons at the front door, the low rumble of wolf acknowledging wolf. Heard his measured footsteps approaching my study, each one precise and unhurried.
My head of security moved like the predator he was, all contained power and watchful silence. When he entered, I caught his scent. Gunpowder and the cold wind he’d driven through to get here.
“Report,” I said without looking up from the documents I’d been pretending to read for hours.
Petrov settled into the chair across from my desk, a slim folder in his hands. His posture was rigid. Military. He’d served in the Russian army before joining the Bratva, and those habits never quite faded.
“I’ve completed the analysis you requested. The incidents at the Hughes Hotel.”
Now I looked up. Gave him my full attention, even as the wolf strained toward the door, toward the scent of apples and cream that still lingered in the hallway. “And?”
“The dead animal delivery. The heating system sabotage. The uptick in hang-up calls to Miss Hughes’s personal line.
” He opened the folder, spreading photographs and printouts across my desk with methodical precision.
Badge swipe records. Shift schedules. Call logs with time stamps highlighted in yellow. “All point to the same conclusion.”
I waited. Let the silence do the work.
“Someone with employee access.” Petrov’s voice carried the certainty of a man who’d spent his career tracking threats.
“The delivery was made through the service entrance using a valid badge code assigned to kitchen staff. The heating sabotage required knowledge of the mechanical room layout and shift patterns that only long-term employees would have. The calls originated from a burner phone, but the timing corresponds precisely with gaps in Miss Hughes’s public calendar.
Gaps that only staff with access to her schedule would know about. ”
The wolf went very still inside me. That particular stillness that came before violence.
“You’re certain?”
“Beyond doubt, sir.” Petrov met my eyes, wolf to wolf. “The threat is from within. Someone on her staff. Someone she trusts.”
I should have felt alarmed. Should have immediately ordered increased protection, demanded Petrov identify the threat and neutralize it before another incident occurred. That was what any reasonable man would do. What any man who cared about the woman under his protection would do.
Instead, I cataloged the information with clinical precision. Filing it away like another asset in my portfolio.
An insider. Someone close to her. Someone she saw every day, smiled at, trusted with the small intimacies of daily life. And that someone wanted her afraid.
Protect her, the wolf demanded. Tell her. She needs to know who’s hunting her.
But knowledge was power. And her fear, her vulnerability, her need for protection from threats she couldn’t see? Those kept her close. Those made her dependent on me. Those ensured she’d come running back every time the world turned hostile.
“Continue surveillance,” I said. My voice betrayed nothing. “Report any new developments immediately.”
Petrov’s expression shifted. Surprise, maybe. Or confusion. “Should I increase the security detail? If the threat is internal, she may be in more danger than we realized. I could position men inside the hotel, blend them with the staff—”
“That won’t be necessary.” I kept my voice even, controlled.
The voice of a man making a calculated business decision.
“Miss Hughes has proven herself capable of handling crises. The heating incident, for example. She managed that brilliantly, by all accounts. I have no doubt she’ll manage this one as well. ”
When she knows about it, I didn’t say. If I choose to tell her.
Petrov hesitated. I watched the questions form behind his eyes, watched him decide not to ask them. He was a good wolf. Loyal. Effective. But he didn’t understand the long game. He saw only the immediate threat, not the patterns of power that underlay everything.
Information was currency. Fear was leverage. And Lena, afraid and uncertain and looking to me for protection? That was exactly where I needed her.
“As you wish.” He gathered his materials and stood, movements crisp and professional despite whatever doubts he harbored. “I’ll have an update for you by end of week.”
After he left, I sat alone in the gathering dark.
The sun had crossed the sky while I pretended to work, and now shadows pooled in the corners of my study like spilled ink. I poured myself a whiskey. Good stuff, aged twenty years, worth more per bottle than most people made in a week. It tasted like nothing.
I stood at the window, watching the last light bleed from the sky. The gardens were blue with dusk, the frost on the hedges catching the dying sun.
I could tell her.
The thought circled back, persistent as the wolf pacing behind my ribs.
I could walk to her room right now, lay out Petrov’s findings, warn her that someone in her hotel wanted her hurt or scared or destroyed.
She’d be safer knowing. She could take precautions.
Examine her staff with new eyes. Root out the threat before it escalated further.
She was smart. Capable. She’d proven that during the heating crisis, when she’d rallied her staff and managed a hundred angry guests and turned disaster into a story about service. If I gave her the information, she’d handle it.
But then she’d be capable. Self-sufficient. She’d solve the problem herself, prove she didn’t need me, didn’t need the protection my presence provided.
And what would bind her to me then? The contract? A piece of paper she’d already demonstrated she could see through?
You’re using her fear to control her. The wolf’s voice dripped with disgust. She sees the real you, stays anyway, and you repay her by keeping her vulnerable. This is weakness, not strength. This is the act of a frightened child, not a vor.
It wasn’t weakness. It was strategy.
Information was power. I’d learned that lesson in the cold halls of the boarding school, where knowing which teacher to avoid and which student would report you could mean the difference between a beating and a peaceful night.
I’d refined it in the years of building an empire from nothing, when every scrap of intelligence was a weapon to be hoarded.
I’d perfected it in every interaction with predators who would devour the vulnerable without hesitation.
I protected her my way. She didn’t need to know how.
Coward, the wolf said again. You’re not protecting her. You’re protecting yourself. You’re terrified that if she doesn’t need you, she won’t want you. And you’d rather keep her scared than risk finding out.
I drained the whiskey and poured another. The burn did nothing to silence him.
Movement in the garden caught my attention. A figure crossing the frozen lawn toward the garage, wrapped in a cashmere coat. She walked quickly, purpose in every stride.
Lena. Heading to her car. Going to the hotel, probably.
I watched her move across the winter-white lawn, her breath misting in the cold air. Her stride was confident despite everything I’d done to her last night. Her head was high. Her shoulders were straight. She moved like a woman who had nothing to apologize for, nothing to be ashamed of.
Like a woman who had looked a monster in the eye and refused to flinch.
I could open the window. Call her name. Tell her what I knew.
Instead, I stood in the shadows like the predator I was, watching through glass as she disappeared into the garage. A moment later, her car emerged and wound down the driveway, taillights glowing red against the gray dusk until they vanished around the curve.
She didn’t look back. Didn’t glance toward the manor where I stood in the dark, whiskey in hand, secrets burning in my chest.
Good. Let her go.
Let her prove herself capable at the hotel. Handle whatever small crisis awaited her tonight. Tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, something would happen that pushed her back toward me. The insider would escalate. The fear would return. And she’d need my protection again.
That was the plan. That was always the plan.
You’re pathetic, the wolf said quietly. She offered you something real, and you’re too afraid to take it.
Maybe I was pathetic. But I was also in control. And control was all I had left.
I turned from the window and sat down with my grandfather’s files. Victory was a week away. Soon Senator William Prescott would be destroyed, his legacy in ruins, his name synonymous with corruption and child abandonment. Fifteen years of patient work would finally bear fruit.
I worked until midnight, until the words blurred and my eyes burned and the whiskey bottle sat half-empty beside the files that would destroy my grandfather.
Somewhere around ten, I heard Lena return.
Heard her footsteps in the hallway, her voice murmuring something to Alice, the soft sound of her climbing the stairs.
Her footsteps paused outside my study door. Just for a moment. Just long enough for me to stop breathing, to strain toward that door with every fiber of my being.
Then she walked on. Up the stairs. To her room. Alone.
Good.
That was what I wanted.