11. Mikhail
MIKHAIL
Iorder lockdown before the echoes fade and while half the hall is still reacting and the other half is still trying to pretend they’re trained enough not to flinch.
“No discussion,” I say, and my voice stays level because volume is for men who want their authority debated.
“Seal the gates, double exterior patrols, and pull every interior team into combat spacing.”
Enzo’s already moving, busy with barking instructions to the soldiers who work to get the curfews in place. I keep Alina behind me. The corridor is open and the angle was chosen, and if there’s a second shooter, then they’ll be waiting for the response.
My palm stays firm at her back, and my fingers don’t soften. If she feels comfort right now, she’ll misread it as safety, and safety is the lie that gets people killed.
Her breathing is quick and broken, and her steps are half a beat behind mine. “Keep up,” I tell her, and it lands harshly, but it lands. We move fast, we take the side turn before the main hall, and two men snap into position without being told.
They didn’t want her dead. If they wanted her dead, they would have taken the second shot while my men were still trying to figure out where the sound came from, and they would have taken it before my body crossed between her and the wall.
This was a measure, and the shooter wanted to watch the measure land.
I get her to the nearest secured junction and I stop long enough to see her face.
Her pupils are wide, her mouth is slightly open, and her hands keep curling and unclenching like she’s trying to remember what control feels like.
“You’re not hurt,” I say, and it’s not a question.
She swallows, then forces the word out. “No.”
I don’t ask how close it was, and I don’t ask what she felt, because I heard it and I saw the impact on stone, and I saw her body jolt before she could stop it.
I turn to Enzo. “Secure her room,” I tell him, and my tone cuts.
“Two men inside, four outside, rotate every hour, and I want them swapped out before anyone gets comfortable.”
“Yes, Boss.”
“And pull the movement logs,” I add. “Every movement since dawn, every door access, every camera blind, and every guard rotation.”
Enzo moves, and his hands are already on the tablet.
The estate starts sealing itself in pieces. Doors that should stay open lock. Staff corridors close. The sound of boots multiplies, and voices drop low enough that orders feel like they’re sliding under the skin rather than sitting in the air.
Alina looks around, and her eyes track all of it.
We keep moving, and I steer her through the east cut which is narrower and covered by three separate camera angles. A guard at the intersection lifts his chin, then shifts to let us pass, and his hand stays near his holster without touching it.
He’s ready, which he should be, considering someone fired inside my perimeter. That means one of my own failed, and that means I have to decide whether the failure was stupidity or betrayal.
Stupidity gets corrected.
Betrayal gets removed.
I get her to her suite and open the door to lead her inside.
Two guards step inside behind us, and two more appear in the hallway.
Alina stops near the bed. She doesn’t sit, doesn’t pace, and she doesn’t ask a single question yet.
Her hands are clenched, and her gaze fixes on the wall as if she’s trying to hold still long enough to stop shaking.
“You stay here,” I tell her.
Her eyes cut to mine. “Like I ever go anywhere.”
“If I had my full way with you,” I reply curtly, “I wouldn’t even let you go to the bathroom alone today.
But you’re you, and there’s only so much of you I can cage.
” I watch the anger flicker in her face and get swallowed by fear.
My heart does this odd, ugly thing where it urges me to pull her into my arms and hold her to me. I push it down.
She opens her mouth, then closes it. I take two steps back, then pause. “Water,” I tell the guard nearest the side table. “Now.”
The guard moves. I don’t tell Alina she’s safe, because I’m not reckless enough to say it and I’m not arrogant enough to believe it.
I leave the room after the guard returns.
Enzo meets me at the junction with a second tablet and a third man trailing behind him.
The third man is one of my internal watch commanders.
His face is tight in the way men get when they know their performance is about to be evaluated by consequences. “Control room,” I say.
We move.
The control room is sealed and staffed, and when I step in, every screen is already live.
Camera feeds stack into a grid, and the estate turns into a map of moving parts.
Guards shift positions in real time. Doors register access.
A service cart pauses at a corner, then gets redirected by a man who doesn’t look at the cart so much as he looks at the corridor behind it.
I stand behind the screens, and I point. “Rewind to the corridor where she was hit,” I say, and my voice stays calm. Panic has never helped me solve anything. A technician scrubs back, and the footage jumps, then smooths.
Alina appears at the edge of frame, and she’s walking with a guard two steps behind her, and her posture is controlled in the way it’s been since she arrived, like she refuses to let anyone see her bend.
She turns her head a fraction, then stops, then the impact hits the perimeter wall behind her, and her whole body jerks.
The camera doesn’t catch the bullet, but it catches the dust and it catches the flinch.
I watch it once, then I watch it again, and I mark the angle.
“Where’s the camera coverage on the opposite side?” I ask.
The commander answers too fast. “That camera went down for maintenance this morning.”
My eyes move to him. “Maintenance by whom?”
He looks at the technician, then back at me. “House staff, Boss. It’s logged.”
“Show me the log,” I say.
The technician brings it up, and I read names and time stamps and approval codes.
The approval code is mine, but it shouldn’t be.
I didn’t authorize maintenance on that camera.
Enzo watches me without speaking. I point at the code on the screen.
“Who used my authorization?” My voice takes on a cold, hard edge.
The commander swallows. “It could have been a duplicated token, Boss.”
“It could be a corpse walking,” I reply. I don’t raise my voice. “But I want the real answer.”
Enzo steps closer. “We can isolate who accessed the system,” he says, tone lethally soft.
“Do it,” I tell him.
I turn to the technician. “Pull every access within the last forty-eight hours,” I say. “I want user IDs, device IDs, and physical locations tied to access points.”
The technician nods and starts, and I turn back to the footage, and I watch guard positions. The garden corridor where Alina was walking has three patrol points, and two of them were occupied, and one of them was empty for twenty-seven seconds.
Twenty-seven seconds is a lifetime.
“Why did post three shift?” I ask.
The commander answers again, and his voice is steady but his eyes aren’t. “Bathroom break, Boss.”
“On rotation?” I ask.
“Yes,” he replies.
“On whose order?” I ask.
He hesitates, and the hesitation is small, but it’s there. Enzo doesn’t move, but his attention sharpens. Keeping my hands behind my back, I step closer to the commander. I don’t want to touch him, and I don’t want anyone to think I’m emotional. “Say it,” I tell him.
He clears his throat. “It was verbal, Boss. It came through one of the senior corridor captains.”
“Name?”
He gives it, and I nod at Enzo. “Bring him in.”
Enzo is already gone before I finish the sentence.
I don’t waste time on theories, and I don’t waste time convincing myself this is an outsider.
An outsider doesn’t get camera maintenance approved under my code, and an outsider doesn’t time a post vacancy that cleanly.
This was either inside help, or it was inside incompetence that someone exploited.
Either way, the inside pays.
Within twenty minutes, the first man comes in.
He’s a corridor captain, he’s been in my house for three years, and he tries to stand straight like posture will save him. I don’t offer him a chair or water.
I point at the screen. “Explain the vacancy,” I say.
He starts talking, and he talks too much. He says rotation, he says bathroom, he says the guard was ill, and he says it in the tone of a man who thinks I’m looking for an excuse to forgive.
I let him talk, and I don’t interrupt, and I watch his hands. They don’t shake, but they move too often, and that tells me he’s rehearsed.
When he finishes, I gesture to the technician. “Play the hallway feed from camera seven,” I say.
The feed runs. It shows the guard leaving post three, another man stepping into the corridor, and that man pausing at the service door for half a second, like he’s checking something, then continue.
That man is the corridor captain. He wasn’t in the control room with me today, and he wasn’t where he claimed he was.
The captain’s face drains.
He opens his mouth, then closes it. I look at him. “Try again,” I say silkily.
He speaks faster. “Boss, I went to check the service door because the lock has been sticking, and I didn’t want—”
“You didn’t want what?” I ask.
He swallows. “I didn’t want a breach.”
I step closer. “A breach happened,” I tell him, “and the person it targeted was my wife.” He tries and fails to hold my gaze and looks down at the floor like the floor will give him a better answer. “Look at me,” I say.
He does, and his eyes shine, and he’s begging without words.
“Who told you to clear post three?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No one told me, Boss.”
“Then why did you do it?” I ask.
He breathes in hard, and the lie tries to climb out again.
I don’t let it. I gesture to the technician. “Pull his comms,” I say.