6. Alexei #4
“Keep her there until she’s done,” I tell Luka. “No unnecessary force or arguments unless her safety requires one.”
“That distinction may be difficult with her.”
“I’m aware.”
Luka says nothing else.
I end the meeting five minutes later after assigning names, files, and routes. The room empties around me, but Sasha stays behind.
“Boss,” she says carefully. “Are we treating Clara as a victim or a risk?”
It’s the correct question, but I resent it anyway.
Viktor goes very still near the door.
I hold Sasha’s eyes until most people would have looked away. She doesn’t. It’s another reason why she’s lasted this long.
“We’re treating Clara as the key.”
Sasha nods. “Understood.”
By early afternoon, I leave Black Tide with more questions than answers and the unpleasant certainty that the pieces still don't fit. Luka remains with Maggie. Viktor sits up front with his sling and silence. The city moves around us, but my mind stays with Roman’s words.
There’s no Clara Bennett before Savannah.
The estate gates open before we reach them. The house waits beyond the long drive, guarded, still, and too quiet without Ivy’s voice or Maggie’s Southern irritation moving through the rooms. Mrs. Bennett meets me near the foyer, wiping her hands on a towel.
“Ivy is in the sunroom,” she says. “She and Daisy are supervising Winston’s nap.”
“Supervising?”
“Apparently he cannot be trusted to sleep honestly.”
I give a single nod and head for the staircase.
Upstairs, I stop outside the closed door of the sitting room at the end of the hall.
Clara’s box isn’t hidden. That would be easier.
It sits in a cedar chest inside the closet where I put it four years ago, after months of avoiding it and one night of deciding grief was a thing that could be contained if I gave it somewhere to live.
I open the closet. The cedar chest waits beneath folded blankets no one uses. I move them aside, lift the lid, and stare at the dark wooden box.
My hand remains on the lid while I stare at it. Roman told me to search it like evidence. He was right to say it. He was also right to know it would be difficult.
I carry the box to my office and set it on the desk.
The brass latch opens with a muted click.
Inside, Clara’s life sits folded into layers.
Photographs first. Ivy as a newborn, red-faced and furious beneath a hospital blanket.
Clara laughing with her head turned away from the camera.
A picture of the three of us, taken by Irina’s predecessor, Ivy caught mid-yawn between us while Clara leaned into my side.
I remember that day. I remember thinking she looked tired and happy and entirely mine.
My hand stills over the photograph before I force myself to place it aside.
Look for evidence.
Beneath the photos are letters, hospital bracelets, a pressed flower from a trip to Charleston, and a small silver bracelet Clara wore often before Ivy was born. Ordinary things. Painful because they’re ordinary.
Then I find an envelope. It’s cream-colored, unmarked, and tucked beneath a stack of folded tissue paper at the bottom of the box. The paper has yellowed slightly at the edges, but the seal is already broken. Clara opened it before hiding it here.
Inside are three items. A photograph, a bank receipt, and a handwritten note.
I pick up the photograph first. Clara stands younger than I ever knew her, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, outside a building in New York.
Her hair is longer, her face thinner, and her smile is absent.
Someone has cut the photograph unevenly along the right side, removing whoever stood beside her.
Only the edge of a woman’s dark sleeve remains.
The bank receipt is next. There’s no name, only a transfer confirmation from an institution I recognize because men in my world use banks like that when they want distance between money and origin. The date is two months before Clara appeared in Savannah.
The note is last. The handwriting is neat and precise.
Do not use the account unless there is no other choice. Do not post photographs. Do not tell anyone where you are. If they find you, leave again.
No signature. No explanation.
I read the note again, searching for something I missed. Clara had been afraid before she ever met me. Before our marriage. Before Ivy. Before the shooting that took her life and left me believing all danger had come from my side of the world.
I sit slowly in the chair behind my desk, the note held between my fingers.
For years, I believed Clara left her family because she wanted freedom. I believed she had built a quiet life in Savannah because she had chosen peace. I believed her privacy came from loving a man like me, knowing what my name carried, and wanting Ivy protected from it.
Now the contents of this box sit spread across my desk, and the story I’ve lived with for years begins to fracture. Clara didn’t only leave something behind. She was hiding. And whoever she feared may have finally found my daughter.