Chapter 3 #2
“I need you to pull the records for last night’s buyer—the man who took the watches, the icon, and the cigarette case. Payment information, message threads, and the broker contact list you keep in the blue binder on your workstation shelf.”
“You want me to pull buyer records at seven in the morning while you dodge my actual questions.” I hear a drawer open and close. She’s already moving toward her office. “You need to give me specifics.”
“Last night’s buyer is the priority. He’s the one who photographed the crest.”
Maren stops talking for three full seconds. “I told you that buyer was trouble.” Her voice hardens. “You need to stop protecting the job and tell me what happened.”
“I’m handling it.” Knowing she’ll keep pushing, I give her what I can.
“The owner came home while I was still inside, Maren. He caught me, and I’m still walking around, which should tell you something.
” I keep it that vague on purpose, because the line isn’t secure, Nikita isn’t patient, and she knows the rules as well as I do.
“You always say that right before you stop handling it.” Her voice drops lower, quiet enough that whoever else is in her apartment won’t catch the next part. “He caught you stealing and let you live. Don’t mistake that for safe.”
The observation is closer to the truth than she knows, and I glance at Nikita without meaning to. He reads every pause and answer, reconstructing Maren’s side of the conversation from my reactions.
“I’ll call you when I can,” I say.
“You’d better call me.” She hangs up without saying goodbye, which is how I know she’s truly scared. Maren doesn’t skip pleasantries unless she’s too worried to remember them.
I set the phone on the desk and slide it back toward Nikita.
He picks it up by the edges, and then does something I don’t expect.
He stands, pushes back his chair, and walks around the desk.
He moves without hurry, which somehow makes the whole approach harder to watch than if he’d lunged.
He holds the phone toward me instead of placing it on the surface between us.
He stops close enough that I have to look up, blocking my view of half the room.
He extends one hand with the phone resting across his palm.
I’d have to reach for it. I’d have to close the distance he’s offering and take it from his hand instead of receiving it across a desk like evidence in a police interview.
The choice is deliberate, and we both know it.
I reach for it and brush his palm during the transfer. The contact lasts less than a second, but the warmth of his skin jolts me, and I know fear didn’t cause it. I pull back and press the phone case into my palm hard enough to leave marks.
He watches me close my fingers around the phone for one beat too long, then steps back before the contact can become anything else.
He returns to his chair without acknowledging what just happened.
I sit with the phone in my lap, forcing myself to focus on the screen instead of the residual heat in my fingers.
“Platon traced last night’s buyer to a brokerage firm connected to Rahil Shilov’s network.” Nikita delivers this without inflection. “The purchase appears to have been a test. The buyer photographed the crest to confirm activity inside the estate for Shilov’s organization.”
Platon steps forward and sets a printed page on the desk.
I lean forward to read it. The brokerage firm is called Gideon Arts Consulting, and the name connects to a chain of auction contacts Maren refused to work with two years ago because the provenance requirements were suspiciously vague and the payment routing ran through three jurisdictions she couldn’t verify.
She told me at the time that the people behind Gideon accepted questionable art as long as the paperwork looked legitimate enough to move money without scrutiny.
“I know this firm. Maren flagged it. She told me the buyers attached to it were laundering provenance, and she dropped the relationship before they could pull her into anything federal.”
Nikita looks at Platon. Platon immediately takes out his phone and begins another search.
“Shilov consumed the Rusakov territory four years ago, and he’s been monitoring dormant assets ever since,” Nikita says. “Your sale activated an estate he’s been watching, and now his people have photographs of the family crest on a server I have to assume he’s already reviewed.”
The broker report changes the situation. I underestimated the network behind the buyer, and Maren may already be exposed. The threat extends far beyond Nikita. Right now, his resources are the only barrier between my family and the network that noticed the sale.
I grip the phone in my lap and force myself to think practically, because practical is all I’ve got right now.
Nikita has resources, security, and information I don’t have access to.
I have buyer records, Maren’s contact network, and receipts from eleven sales—enough to trace every piece I sold.
He needs what I know. I need what he can do.
Dorian raised me never to depend on a man’s protection, and Celine reinforced that lesson by proving that depending on anyone gives them permission to take what they want.
Sitting across from Nikita Rusakov and calculating that cooperation is my safest option goes against every survival rule I’ve ever followed.
He has enough power to punish me and has chosen information instead. His restraint gives me room to cooperate, and cooperation offers better odds than resistance.
Nikita turns the Gideon report toward me. “You need to tell me everything Maren knows about this broker.”
I stop calculating how to escape this mansion and start calculating how useful I need to become to the man sitting across from me.