12. Mikhail
MIKHAIL
While my mother remains on the phone, I watch Taylor struggle through her first assignment beyond the darkened glass wall of my office.
The brighter lights in the outer office allow me to see the desks clearly while reducing me to little more than a shadow from her side.
A control beneath my desk can turn the glass fully opaque when privacy is required.
Taylor sits at the desk beside Dima’s with a pen in her hand, trying to convince an entire office that she has not recently made a disastrous personal decision involving its highest-ranking official.
She is good at pretending, but not as good as she thinks.
Her spine is too straight. Her eyes return to my office every few minutes, though she can’t tell whether I’m watching.
She reads the same page three times. I follow her eyes as they scan the words without absorbing them.
Twice, Viktoriya speaks to her from the desk directly across from Dima, and Taylor’s head snaps up to answer too quickly, her expression blank. Her mind is still on me.
Dima leans sideways between their desks to point at something on Taylor’s page. His attention is on the document. Hers is nowhere near him.
I know this. I can see it. It doesn’t stop me from disliking the closeness of their chairs or the ease with which he reaches into her space.
Across from him, Viktoriya lifts her eyes from a folder. Dima notices immediately. His attention leaves Taylor so quickly it should embarrass me. He gives Viktoriya a small, private smile, and her mouth softens at one corner before she looks back down.
Taylor notices and hides a smile. I notice too. It should settle something in me. It does not.
I should have Taylor transferred. The thought returns every five minutes with the persistence of a dull blade.
I close my eyes. For a moment, the office is not an office. It is my bedroom in the dark. Taylor half-asleep against me. My hand hovering above her shoulder, close enough to feel warmth, not close enough to claim it.
Too late, I think.
I don’t say that to my mother. Instead, I say, “I will send someone to stay with you.”
“No.”
“Mama.”
“No more men.”
“You need protection.”
“I need a son who does not make protection necessary.” The line goes quiet between us. I have no answer for that either. Finally, she sighs. “Send one. The quiet one. Anton. He likes my cooking, and he sometimes does the dishes afterward.”
Despite myself, I smile at the image of Anton washing the dishes. “He is a security officer, and we have a maid, Mama,” I say, “But okay. Only Anton.”
I look through the glass again. Taylor taps the end of her pen against the desk while Dima explains something. Viktoriya approaches from the other side and reaches across to take the document from him. Their fingers touch. Dima’s eyes lift to her face and remain there longer than necessary.
“And no one gets hurt because of me,” my mother says. I do not answer quickly enough. “Misha.”
“No one gets hurt because of you,” I say. Because of you. It is a promise and not a promise.
She accepts it because she’s tired. Or because she knows it’s the best I can give.
“I love you,” she says. I don’t know whether she says the words because they are true or because they are muscle memory, a path she has walked so many times it has burned itself into her brain.
She told my father she loved him too, and he was a sick man.
Perhaps my mother’s love is evidence of some sickness of its own.
“I love you too,” I tell her.
I hang up and sit with the receiver still in my hand. For a long moment, I do nothing.
Then I call Arkady. “I’m listening,” he says, his voice crisp and immediate.
“Are the six secured?”
“Five. Sergei is bringing in the last now.”
“Separate rooms?”
“Yes.”
“Telephones?”
“Collected.”
“Accounts?”
“Being reviewed.”
“One of them gave Orlov enough information to reach my mother’s gate before breakfast. Find out which one.”
“I will.”
“And find the three men who came to the eastern gate.”
A brief pause. “Alive?”
I look through the darkened glass. Taylor sits with one leg crossed over the other, her foot bouncing absently.
She taps her pen against the paper and stares at whatever Dima has placed in front of her.
He says something that makes her laugh once.
The sound doesn’t reach me through the glass.
I resent him for causing it anyway. “Alive,” I say.
“I want to know who sent them, who told them about her pharmacy, and how they knew which entrance serves her wing.”
“And after?”
“Call me after.”
Arkady understands what that means.
I end the call and press the intercom. “Viktoriya.”
“Yes, Governor Korolev?”
“Send Miss Hayes in.”
A pause. Not long enough to be disobedient. Long enough to suggest she has opinions. “Yes, Governor Korolev.”
I release the button and look down at the files on my desk. Donor meeting. Polling numbers. District briefings. A threat against my mother that cannot be solved from behind a polished desk. All of it important. All of it waiting. Waiting the way Taylor is on the other side of the glass.
Viktoriya speaks to her. Taylor’s head turns toward my office.
Her hand moves immediately to her hair. She smooths her long dirty-blond ponytail, then adjusts her bangs, unaware that I can see her.
A strand has caught in one of her earrings.
She frees it, takes a breath, and reaches for the folder on her desk.
Dima says something to her. She answers without looking at him. Viktoriya gives him a warning look from across the desks. He puts both hands up in surrender, smiling at her rather than Taylor.
I let Taylor take her time. When she finally knocks, I call, “Come in.”
She steps inside and leaves the door open by an inch. I notice immediately. “Close the door, please.”
Her eyes move toward the darkened glass wall, then back to me. She considers what a closed door with the governor might mean. To her. To the office. To anyone watching.
I dislike that she has to consider it. I dislike even more that she is right to.
Still, she obeys.
Good girl, I think, and hate the memory of the phrase in my own mouth.
Taylor stands near the door with the folder held against her chest like a shield. Her work clothes are even more distracting now that I am forced to look at them directly. Earlier, surprise protected me. Now nothing does.
Her dark skirt is fitted but modest, ending just above her knees. Her blouse is tucked neatly into it, though the collar sits crooked. I have the sharp, useless desire to fix it with my own hand, but the desk remains between us.
“You wanted to see me?” she asks. The formal tone is good. It’s the same one she used when she called me Governor Korolev in front of Viktoriya. Respectful enough for anyone listening. Sharp enough for me to know she is angry.
“Yes.” I gesture toward the chair in front of my desk.
She shakes her head. If she will not come to me, I will come to her. I stand.
Her fingers tighten around the folder.
“I wanted to check with you. Earlier, I was unnecessarily harsh about your lateness.”
“You were?”
“I was.”
She waits. I continue. “If you do not think you will be comfortable here, now that you know you will be working under me—” Color rises into her face. I stop. “Poor choice of words.” Her mouth presses into a thin line. “If you would prefer another placement,” I continue, “I can arrange one.”
Her face changes. Not much. Taylor has some discipline when she remembers to use it. But I see the color leave her mouth. I see the small, involuntary breath she takes through her nose.
Fear. That irritates me immediately.
“What is it?” I ask.
She lifts her chin. “Please don’t fire me.”
For one second, I say nothing. Her cheeks flush as soon as the words leave her mouth, and anger follows the humiliation so quickly I almost smile. “Fire you?”
Warmth curls low in my stomach at the idea of her begging me for anything.
“I need this placement.” The words come too quickly now, as if she knows she has begun badly and must finish before pride stops her.
“I know this is awkward, and I know I should have realized who you were, but I didn’t.
I swear I didn’t. And I won’t say anything to anyone.
Not to Viktoriya, not to anyone in the program, not to anyone back home. I know last night was—”
“Stop.”
Her mouth shuts. She stands with the folder clutched against her chest, breathing too quickly, looking at me as if I’m about to take something from her.
The pleasure dies immediately. Disgust turns in my stomach, aimed entirely at myself.
The begging I like, and the fear I usually like, but those things belong to men who owe me money or men who have lied to my face.
They should not belong to a twenty-year-old girl on the first day of her internship because she believes a mistake in my bed means I will ruin her future.
I am not that kind of criminal.
“You think I called you in here to dismiss you?”
“I don’t know why you called me in here.”
“To see whether you were comfortable working with me.”
She blinks. Then suspicion returns. “Comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“With you?”
“That was the question.”
Her eyes move toward the darkened glass wall, then toward the closed door, then back to my face. I can almost hear the calculation in her head. Who can see us. Who might speculate. What a closed door means. What she can afford to lose. Not much, apparently. “I’m comfortable,” she says.
“You are lying.”
Her mouth tightens. “I’m professional.”
“That is a different word.”
“I can do the job.”
“I did not ask if you could do the job.”
“Well, that is the only part that matters.”
Now I almost smile. There she is. Afraid, embarrassed, furious, and still somehow willing to argue with the man she believes could have her removed with a phone call. “You have done this all wrong,” I say.
Her body goes still. “Done what wrong?”