Chapter 9
ROLAN
I watch her through the cameras for a week.
I’m aware of how that sounds, that in any other context, a man sitting in his office reviewing security footage of a woman he hasn’t met would merit a phone call to the police.
But this isn’t any other context. This is my home.
My daughter. My operation. And every person who steps foot inside these walls is my responsibility to assess, monitor, and, if necessary, remove.
So, I watch.
Elizabeth Calloway arrives on Saturday morning in a car I sent, carrying one suitcase and a bag. People reveal themselves in what they carry. In what they think is enough. This woman’s entire life fits into two containers that my housekeeper could lift with one hand.
She’s small. The cameras confirm what I saw in the living room footage. The slight frame and narrow shoulders.
She talks with her hands and smiles at the guards who don’t smile back. She tries to make conversation with Dmitri, which is the same as trying to make conversation with a concrete wall, except the wall would occasionally grunt .
She’s beautiful.
The thought arrives unbidden. The security cameras in the hallways and common areas are high definition, installed so that facial recognition and threat analysis can function at maximum accuracy.
And what that high-definition footage reveals is a woman with dark hair and hazel eyes that shift between green and gold depending on the light, and a face that is, objectively, a problem.
I set the observation aside. It doesn’t matter. She’s an employee.
I chose not to introduce myself, asking Mikhail to inform her I was on a business trip.
The last governess, the one who lasted nine days before resigning, went white in the face when I walked into the room to introduce myself.
I was polite. “Thank you for being here. Anya needs consistency. I trust you’ll provide it.” Standard, nothing remarkable. The woman recoiled as if I’d just announced her funeral.
I’ve been told I’m intimidating, Alexei says it’s the eyes, inherited from my father.
Mikhail says it’s the way I stand when I enter a room.
Dmitri… has said nothing on the subject.
Whatever it is, I’ve learned that my presence destabilizes people, and the last thing Anya needs is another tutor scared into resigning because of me.
So, I stay away, working from the city and in my office late at night, after Elizabeth has retired to her room. I leave early, before she comes down for breakfast. We exist in the same house without existing in the same space, and I tell myself this is strategy, not avoidance.
And I watch.
Monday.
The first lesson.
I have a 9:00 a.m. call with Yuri about the port logistics, a 10:30 with the construction foreman on Randolph, and a noon briefing with Alexei on the Albanian countermeasures. The security feed is open on my phone. I check it between meetings. A glance. Two seconds. Standard monitoring.
I check fourteen times before noon.
Camera six in the sunroom, where Mikhail told me Elizabeth would be conducting lessons.
The wide angle shows the full room: the windows, the table, and the art supplies she’s arranged.
And two figures. One small, guarded, with her arms crossed.
The other sits across from her, drawing and talking. Her mouth moves as her hands gesture.
I can’t hear what she’s saying. This bothers me more than it should.
After twenty minutes, Anya uncrosses her arms. I note the time: 9:23 a.m. After thirty, she picks up a pencil, and by the end of the hour, they’re both drawing at the same table, not speaking, or maybe speaking, I can’t tell.
The silence of visual-only surveillance is its own kind of torment, but Anya isn’t retreating.
Closing the feed, I open the Albanian file and start reading. Three lines are the most I manage before I toss it aside and pick up my phone.
9:58 a.m. Anya is holding up her sketchbook for Elizabeth to see. Elizabeth leans forward, and I see her face now. The secondary camera, camera seven, catches her from a different angle, closer, and the resolution at this distance shows me what the living room footage couldn’t.
I watch her mouth form words I can’t hear and observe how her face changes from animated to soft, then surprised. Whatever Anya is showing her, it’s landed somewhere genuine .
I close the feed, count to sixty, and open it again.
This is not standard monitoring.
Tuesday.
Elizabeth reads to Anya. I see her mouth moving, her hands gesturing, her body performing the story rather than merely reading it.
She uses her whole self: her face changes with the characters, her hands become props, and her posture shifts.
Even without audio, I see the rhythm of it, the cadence, the way she pauses, waits, and lets the silence do its work.
Anya watches. Her eyes follow Elizabeth’s hands; her small body is oriented toward her, not away. The rabbit is in her lap, not clutched against her chest.
I switch cameras. Elizabeth’s face fills more of the frame. Oblivious to the camera, she’s entirely focused on Anya, and her face in this unguarded state is different from the face in her agency headshot.
The professional mask she wears in the corridors, with a competent smile and a straight posture, is gone. What’s hidden below is warmer.
She’s stunning.
That thought again. Uninvited and persistent.
I close the feed and don’t reopen it for twenty-seven minutes. A new record of restraint.
Wednesday.
Alexei delivers the report at 8:00 a.m.
“Intel on Landon Webb,” he says, setting the folder on my desk. I skip the description of the business that was already included in Mikhail’s file on Elizabeth and move to the important part.
“Targeting low-income communities. Two enforcement teams for collections, both staffed with ex-cons, both known for escalating to physical intimidation when payments are late,” Alexei informs me.
Webb’s operation is midsized but well-connected.
He doesn’t work in isolation, and his network extends into the western suburbs through a lending syndicate that shares infrastructure with several operations we’ve been monitoring for months.
Not Albanian, he’s not directly connected to Dushku.
But adjacent. Close enough that the circles overlap in ways that bear watching.
I turn to the client profiles. Calloway’s entry is the largest outstanding balance in Webb’s portfolio. $478,540. Held separately from the syndicate’s books.
“He’s carrying her debt as a personal asset,” I note.
Alexei nods. “Separate from the syndicate. Which means it’s not just business.”
“It’s leverage.”
“Control. She’s the highest value asset in his portfolio. If he sells the debt to the syndicate, he loses direct access to her. He’s keeping her close.”
Keeping her close.
It’s a leash.
A possessiveness burns in the pit of my gut. I try to blow it out, unsuccessfully.
“Is he violent?”
“The enforcement teams are. Him, personally — the file suggests psychological manipulation rather than physical force. But the line between those things gets thin with men like this.”
I know that line. I’ve built operations on it.
“Continue monitoring,” I order. “If Webb’s network intersects with any of our active operations — particularly the Albanian situation — I want to know immediately.”
Alexei doesn’t need to hear more. He takes the file and leaves.
I absorb what I’ve learned. She works in my house now, cares for my daughter, sleeps twelve doors from my office, and she’s tethered to a predator who operates in the same shadowy world I do.
I could clear the debt. After all, half a million is nothing, a rounding error in my quarterly accounts. One phone call. One transfer. Done.
But I don’t make the call.
The debt keeps her here. If I clear it, she has options. Options mean she could leave, and if she leaves, Anya…
I stop the thought and open the security feed on the sunroom.
Elizabeth and Anya are painting, with watercolor this time. The light from the windows washes over her face. The hazel in her eyes catches the sun. Her mouth is moving in what I’m certain is praise, and my daughter is sitting three feet away from her.
I close the feed.
And open it twelve minutes later.
Close it.
Open it.
This has to stop.
Thursday.
The Albanian situation escalates.
Besnik Dushku, the head of the Albanian faction that’s been pushing into our territory, makes a move. Not violent.
He files a competing bid through a shell company for a city contract we’ve already secured, undercutting ours by twelve percent. The alderman we own calls in a panic — voice cracking, breath short, realizing that the people who bought him might not be the most dangerous in the room anymore.
This is Dushku’s strategy. He doesn’t fight in the streets.
He fights in boardrooms, permitting offices, and city council chambers.
He wears suits that cost more than some of my soldiers make in a month.
He speaks four languages and smiles when he threatens you.
He’s the type of enemy I respect and can’t afford to underestimate.
“We respond,” I tell Alexei during our morning briefing. “But not yet. First, I want Yuri to map every shell company Dushku’s operating through. Every bid. Every contract. Every city official he’s touched. When we move, I want to dismantle his infrastructure, not just his latest play.”
“And if he escalates before we’re ready?”
“Then we escalate faster. But I’d prefer a surgical approach to a war.”
“You always prefer a surgical approach.”
“Wars are expensive. Surgery is precise.”
Alexei nods, moving on to the next topic. Shipment timelines. A soldier in the outer circle who’s been spending beyond his means: new car, new apartment, a girlfriend with tastes that exceed his salary. Could be skimming. Could be selling information. Either way, it needs attention.
“Watch him,” I say. “Two weeks. If he’s dirty, we’ll know.”
“And if he is?”