Chapter 19
ELLIE
Sunday arrives ahead of schedule.
I’m ready by eight-fifteen. Black jeans, a cream sweater, and flat boots. Hair down.
The meeting with Landon is at ten. I picked Woodfield Commons specifically because it will be full of people. Families, strollers, and teenagers killing time. The background noise of ordinary life. Landon prefers privacy. He’ll hate the setting, which is the point.
Public means witnesses, and that means he has to keep the mask on.
I stand in my room for a moment longer than necessary, turning my phone over in my hands. I already know what he wants: to look me in the eyes and remind me that he can reach me anywhere; to make me feel small and managed. And then he wants me to thank him for the privilege.
I’ve been managing Landon Webb for four years. I know how to survive a meeting with him. Smile enough, but not too much. Answer questions directly, without elaboration. Don’t apologize unless necessary. Don’t let him see the fear .
I walk to Rolan’s office and pause outside the door long enough to feel ridiculous, then knock twice.
“Come in.”
He’s behind the desk as always — jacket off, tie knotted. The lamp is still on even though the windows let in enough light that it’s unnecessary.
“I wanted to confirm,” I say, from the doorway. “For today. That I’m cleared to leave.”
His eyes move from the papers in front of him to my face. The assessment is brief and thorough. I’ve learned not to fidget under it, which has been a challenge.
“I’m a man of my word, Miss Calloway.”
He closes the folder in front of him, stands in a single unhurried motion, and reaches for the jacket on the coat rack by the door.
“Let’s go then,” he says.
“I’m sorry?”
He lifts a set of car keys from the hook beside the rack. The movement is so utterly matter of fact that I spend two full seconds checking whether I misunderstood.
“You—” I stop. Start again. “I don’t need?—”
“It’s not safe for you to go alone.” He checks his phone and pockets it. “The city isn’t the estate.”
“I lived in the city for three years before I came here.”
“Mm.”
That’s not going to work, I can’t risk having Rolan meeting Landon. He would find out everything, I would be fired, and life is already hard enough as it is.
“Mr. Belov, that’s genuinely not necessary. I’m going to a shopping center in the middle of the morning. I’ll be in public the entire time. There’s no reason?—”
“Don’t argue, Elizabeth.”
He shrugs his jacket on without looking at me. It’s charcoal and perfectly cut. He turns toward the door and pauses .
“Have you changed your mind?” He’s looking at me over his shoulder with a neutral expression, completely relaxed.
I have not changed my mind. I have a meeting with Landon in less than two hours and absolutely no plan for what happens if Rolan is standing beside me when it happens.
“No,” I say.
“Then come.”
I follow him through a part of the house I’ve never seen.
In almost two months, I’ve mapped maybe sixty percent of this place.
He opens a door at the end of the corridor, and I follow him through it into an underground garage.
It’s fully climate controlled. The lighting consists of precise, commercial-grade LEDs, and lined along the walls and the center of the space are cars. Too many for one single person.
I stop walking and count seven cars. Eight, if you include the black sedan tucked in the far corner, which looks more like a work vehicle than anything else. I recognize a couple of the black SUVs — I’ve been driven in one, I’ve seen Alexei climb out of another.
Rolan heads for the BMW.
It’s parked slightly apart from the others and is a beautiful midnight blue.
“Nice car,” I say.
The words come out before I can decide whether they’re appropriate.
Rolan glances at me. His lips move. It’s the closest I’ve seen him get to a smile.
“Recent acquisition,” he says. “I haven’t had the opportunity to take it out yet.”
“Today’s the day, then.”
“Apparently.”
I look around the garage, half-expecting to see Dmitri materializing from the shadows .
“Where’s Dmitri?”
I catch a glimpse of irritation cross Rolan’s face. “He’ll follow with the others.”
“The others?”
“Security detail.”
“We need a security detail to go to a shopping center.” It comes out flatter than intended. A statement rather than a question.
He opens the passenger door.
I get in.
It smells of new leather. I press my hands flat against my thighs and stare straight ahead while he closes the door and walks around to the driver’s side.
The engine starts.
“Woodfield Commons,” I say.
He nods once, shifts, and the car moves.
The drive is twenty minutes. We leave through a side gate I didn’t even know existed, flanked immediately by two black sedans that appear from behind.
The city opens up around us. December in Chicago means bare trees and the flat gray light that makes everything look slightly overexposed.
It’s a typical Midwest Sunday morning, slow and private, with the city exhaling before the week takes it back.
I watch it through the window and run and rerun the mathematics of the next two hours, looking for a variable I can use.
“You’re quiet,” Rolan says.
“I’m always quiet in cars.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
The observation is delivered without inflection. I turn from the window. He’s looking at the road, both hands easy on the wheel.
“What do you mean?”
“Dmitri told me you ask plenty of personal questions. ”
I did do that.
“Would you even answer if I asked?”
“Maybe.”
I mull over possible questions.
Your favorite food? No. That would be too shallow.
How did your wife die? That would be too dark, so I pick the middle option.
“What does your company do?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. We pass under an overpass, and the light dims and returns.
“Mostly imports, but we also have some areas in the real estate sector. What are you doing in a shopping center, anyway?”
My body tenses for a moment, but I recover quickly.
“Shopping?” I should have thought of a better answer, but that’s all that comes to mind while I can smell him all over the car.
His jaw shifts, barely.
“I could use some new clothes,” I continue, which isn’t exactly a lie. “I didn’t bring much when I moved in.”
“I noticed.”
“The cream one is versatile.”
“It is.”
I go back to looking out the window.
Woodfield Commons on a Sunday morning is exactly what I need it to be: loud and crowded. The space is alive with the hum of holiday energy, right on schedule for the middle of December. Decorations are up, and some much-needed cheer is here.
I check my phone as we walk in. Eight fifty-four.
The meeting is at ten. I have one hour and six minutes to figure out how to be in two places at once, or to be in one place and have Rolan be somewhere else.
The security I can account for: Dmitri is behind us somewhere, and a second man, youngish, short hair, one of the new guards, moves parallel to us a half-step further back. I caught his name once from Alexei. Savin, I think.
What I cannot account for is Rolan, who walks beside me through the mall atrium with his hands in his jacket pockets, and who has shown no indication that he’s about to leave my side for any reason whatsoever.
I angle toward the first clothing store I see — ZARA.
I go in.
Rolan follows.
Okay , I think. Okay, this is fine, you know what men are like in women’s clothing stores . Ten minutes, and he’ll be checking his phone near the door. Fifteen, and he’ll be communicating through thinly veiled sighing. Twenty, and he’ll invent a reason to wait outside.
Except Rolan doesn’t sigh and doesn’t check his phone. He stands slightly to my left and watches me.
A woman nearby glances at him and then away quickly.
I pull a dark green sweater from a rack and hold it up.
“This is nice,” I say, mostly to myself.
“If you say so,” he says.
I glance at him. He’s looking at the sweater with the same expression he uses for everything — neutral, attentive, present.
I add it to the basket and slip in three other things I actually want.
Twenty-five minutes later, we exit with a bag I didn’t plan on, and Rolan is still beside me, showing no signs of inconvenience.
“You don’t have to follow me into every store,” I say once we’re back in the atrium.
“I know. ”
“Don’t you have” — I gesture vaguely — “things? On a Sunday? Things that need doing that aren’t this?”
He considers the question. “Several, yes.”
“So you could?—”
“I’ve chosen to be here instead,” he says simply. “With you.”
I huff, giving up for now.
We walk. I try to check the atrium without appearing to scan it. There’s no sign of Landon. He could be here already — he’s early to things, another feature of his personality that I’ve learned to treat as a threat — or he could be waiting until ten, exactly on time, making me wait.
By 10:36 a.m., I’m thinking about calling Landon to reschedule — a thought that makes my stomach hurt, when Rolan says, “I’ll get the car.”
I halt.
“What?”
“The car.” He nods toward the east exit and the parking structure beyond it. “Wait here. I’ll bring it around.”
This is the moment. This is the window, the one I couldn’t manufacture and couldn’t engineer, arriving on its own.
Rolan turns toward Dmitri and the other guard, murmurs in low Russian, and they follow him toward the parking structure.
Approximately ninety seconds pass before I feel the discomfort.
“Hey, baby.”
The voice comes from my left.
And everything slows.
“Finally alone,” he says.
“Landon.” I keep my voice level. “This isn’t a good time.”
“You’ve said that before.” He takes a step closer, angling slightly so that his body is between me and the direction Rolan went.
“I’m starting to think there’s never going to be a good time.
You’re not at your apartment. You’re not answering your phone.
I had to hear from a contact that you’d taken a live-in job somewhere outside the city.
” His head tilts. “Who are these people, Ellie?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
“Your location is my concern. You are my concern.” He pauses, adjusts, and composes himself. The mask re-settles. “I want to talk. That’s all. Come with me for ten minutes.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m not asking.”
A cold edge finds the small of my back.
My body stills.
“Walk,” Landon says.
I walk.
The parking garage is empty, only cars are in sight. Two steps. Three. Eight.
“Let her go.” The voice comes from directly ahead.
Rolan is standing twelve feet away. His voice is low, and his expression is one of a complete lack of concern.
Landon laughs. The sound goes through me. It’s the same laugh from four years of evenings in his apartment. Mocking. I feel my stomach pull tight with the old, familiar disgust.
“You don’t know who you’re talking to,” Landon says.
Rolan’s eyes move from Landon to me and back again.
“I know who I’m talking to.”
His voice is low and absolutely flat.
Landon goes still. I feel it through the proximity.
He recovers quickly. He always does.
“Then you know she owes me,” Landon says. Easy again, conversational. The hand behind my back doesn’t move. “She came here to see me. Didn’t you, Ellie?” He doesn’t wait for my answer. “This is a private matter between her and me. Whatever she does in her off hours is her business.”
Rolan doesn’t respond to this. He doesn’t blink.
“If you’re expecting the two men that were with you,” Rolan says, “they’re otherwise occupied. ”
The silence that follows is pointed. I feel Landon register it, the slight shift of his weight.
“You’re making a mistake,” Landon warns.
“Release her.”
“She owes?—”
“I won’t say it again.”
Landon’s chest expands. The hand at my back presses slightly harder.
Rolan steps forward.
I feel it in Landon before I see it. The body against my back goes rigid first, then — and I have never, in four years of knowing this man, felt this — he shifts backward. A half-step. Small, involuntary. The knife comes up.
The blade presses against the side of my throat. I feel the cold metal, my breath goes shallow, and Landon’s arm tightens across my collarbone, pulling me closer, using me as a shield between himself and the beast stalking toward him.
“Stop,” Landon says. His voice has changed. “Stop or I’ll?—”
Rolan doesn’t stop.
The pressure of the blade increases. I feel the edge of it. I don’t breathe while Rolan covers the last few feet between us, and then everything happens at once.
He surges forward.
Landon’s grip jerks. Rolan’s hands are on me. He passes me backward behind him in a single motion, and I stumble, catching myself against the concrete barrier, and turn in time to watch his hand close around Landon’s wrist.
The sound Landon makes is not a word.
Rolan twists, one controlled rotation, precise as a key in a lock, and the knife comes free. It transfers between them so smoothly that it takes me a moment to register which hand it ended up in.
Landon’s arm is wrenched up behind him at an angle that doesn’t look comfortable, and the knife is now pressed flat against his throat.
His face is contorted with an emotion I’ve never seen on him before. Fear. “What the hell?—”
“Not another word,” Rolan interrupts. His voice is without emotion. “You know, I should kill you,” he says. “But I won’t. Not this time.”
The silence after it is total. Landon’s trembling lips don’t dare part.
Then Rolan pulls the knife back, and, in the same motion, brings the blade down against Landon’s shoulder. A wet thud.
Landon drops, screaming.
I stare.
The moment I understand what happened, Rolan is beside me. I don’t know when he crossed the distance. His hand is on my arm, firm, gripping above the elbow.
“We need to go.”
“He’s—”
“Now.”
His hand tightens.
“But I?—”
“Move, now.”
And I move.