ELENA #2
The man with the tablet steps into view. “Careful,” he says. “Karpov said alive.” Karpov. The name lands clean and cold in my head. So he's Karpov's man.
I wrench my head up enough to spit, “He picked a side, then.”
The hand on my face eases just enough for me to breathe. The man with the earpiece crouches in front of me, dark tactical clothes, clean jaw, expensive watch turned inward under his sleeve. He isn’t house. He isn’t Russian either. Moretti’s extraction lead, then.
“It was never your side,” he says in accented Russian.
I’d like to bite him. Break his nose. Take one useful thing out of this. One of them catches my arm and hauls me up to standing so fast, the kitchen lurches around me.
The older cook is still crouched behind the rack, white-faced and shaking.
One of Maksim’s guards lies half under the pantry door with blood spreading out under him.
No one looks at either of them. The kitchen has already become a transit point now.
That’s when I understand exactly what being listed means.
No one wants me dead. Dead closes the account. They want me movable.
The man with the inward-turned watch looks me over once, from my bare feet to my hair half falling loose down my back, and says in Italian, “This is her?”
Karpov's man answers in the same language. I don’t catch all of it, only enough to hear the shape of ownership in it. Yes. Confirmed. Alive. Then he says in Russian, for my benefit, or maybe because humiliation is easier in a language I know.
“Listed collateral.”
“Go to hell,” I say, because it’s the only thing in my reach.
The man nearest me smiles. “This from the bridge itself.”
I kick backward hard enough to connect with a shin. He curses. A hand clamps over the front of my throat and shoves me into the side of the prep counter.
“Enough,” the Moretti man says.
His tone is mild. That makes everyone else obey faster. He steps closer, taking his time. His eyes drift over the zip ties at my wrists, then to the bruise already darkening on my throat under the man’s hand.
“Not the face,” he says.
The grip loosens at once.
I laugh, and it comes out thin and ugly. “Should I be grateful?”
“No,” he says. “Walk.”
I don’t.
It earns me a hand at the back of my neck and a shove toward the service corridor.
My feet slip on tile, then catch. My robe twists half open from the struggle, and as I jerk it closed with bound hands, the fabric snags on a drawer handle and tears, which makes the men around me laugh.
I hate them for hearing how hard I’m breathing.
The digital panel at the corner now blinks hard red.
WEST SERVICE ENTRY OVERRIDE. MANUAL LOCK FAILED. INNER GRID COMPROMISED.
A body lies facedown near the cold-room door in one of the house suits, one arm trapped under him wrongly. Another man farther down has slumped against the wall beneath a framed service schedule, blood smeared across the neatly typed columns of deliveries and staffing times.
Two more men join the group from the direction of the side stairs. One of them is the estate driver.
“You found her,” he says.
The Moretti man doesn’t answer. He just gives the smallest nod.
The driver’s gaze slides over me, impersonal as paperwork. “Good. West service exit is clear for another minute.”
Another minute. That means there are still men in this house fighting. Still doors holding. Parts of Maksim’s machine are still slowing the breach.
My head jerks toward the back corridor on instinct, toward the deeper part of the house where the study and office layers sit behind old wood and controlled access. I hear distant shots and someone shouting orders through a radio with too much static on the line.
No sign of Maksim.
The driver notices where I’m looking. “Don’t worry. He’s busy.”
I look straight at him. “When he finds you, I hope you’re alive for it.”
His mouth flattens, and for one clean second I know fear is still a language in this house.
Then he grabs my upper arm and marches me forward.
We move fast through the rear passage, past shelves of dry goods and cases of wine stacked behind cage doors, past the side door that stays locked and now hangs open with the panel gutted off the wall.
Cold cuts through the corridor. Somewhere outside, an engine turns over once, then settles into a waiting growl.
A convoy. This was planned as a transfer.
At the service threshold, I dig in my heels hard enough to wrench my shoulder. It buys me half a second and a bruise on the driver’s hand where my weight drags wrong.
“Move her.”
“Try asking prettier,” I shoot back, because if I stop talking I’m going to start hearing the word bridge over and over until I come apart.
One of the men behind me laughs. “She sounds like the reports.”
“Shut up and take the package.”
I turn on that one so fast the zip ties bite deeper. “Say that again.”
The man grins. “Package.”
I lunge at him anyway. It gets me nowhere except a fistful of my hair and a violent jerk backward that sends pain across my scalp. My knees fold. The Moretti man steps in close, not touching, just watching while the others haul me straight again.
“That,” he says, “is the last time we indulge you.”
The west service court is lit in broken patches from emergency lamps and headlights. Two black SUVs sit nose-out toward the tree line. One gate camera hangs by its wiring. The window of the guard shack is blown out. There’s no fight spread across the grounds. The real damage was done inside first.
They drag me over the gravel. Every step tears at my feet. Bare legs. Thin robe. Hands bound. Somebody’s fist twisted in my hair.
One of the men opens the SUV door. I plant both feet.
“Get in.”
“No.”
The driver slams his palm between my shoulder blades and folds me into the seat hard enough to crack my mouth against the opposite frame. Pain blooms bright. I taste blood. Men climb in on either side of me. The Moretti man takes the front passenger seat. The locks engage, and we roll.
Karpov’s man sits beside me. “Listed collateral,” he says to the front. “Face preserved. Minor resistance.”
They answer each other in Italian, too fast for me to catch every word. I get enough.
Bridge. Sergei.
My whole body goes cold. He notices and smiles without warmth. Then he switches back to Russian so I understand this part clearly.
“Your father is already on his way,” he says. “He intends to inspect what his daughter is worth.”