Chapter 4
NIKITA
Mila Ermakova arrives first, through the garden entrance, carrying her medical bag and a thermos of coffee she must have brewed before dawn.
Platon let her in himself and walked her through, because Mila is the one person outside this circle he trusts with a key and a code, and she’s already examined the guest room medicine cabinet by the time I come downstairs.
Her assessment is characteristically blunt.
“Your guest room has expired aspirin and a blood-pressure monitor with dead batteries,” she says. “If anyone gets hurt today, I’m working with my bag and whatever antiseptic your kitchen stocks.”
Platon comes through the service entrance off the kitchen ten minutes later, carrying a laptop bag and a file box. He’s been running traces from his rented property since five this morning, and the circles under his eyes confirm it.
“Vera’s coming through the east gate in twenty minutes,” he says, setting the file box on the counter.
“I staggered the arrival times so nobody driving past sees three cars at a house that’s been empty for four years.
Angelina’s parking on the service road and walking in through the side path.
” He watches me for the objection I made last night, when I told him to keep my sister at the cottage until the threat was scoped.
“The overnight sweep came back clean. You cleared her yourself this morning, or I wouldn’t have called her. ”
I grunt. “What about Adrian?”
“He confirmed thirty minutes ago. He’s driving from the city and using the north entrance off the access lane.
His arrival’s timed forty minutes after Vera’s.
” Platon checks his phone. “I put a camera on the estate road the night the crest photos surfaced. No unusual traffic since, but that changes if we’re sloppy about this. ”
The staggering matters. Shilov watches dormant Rusakov assets, and the Water Mill property is one of them.
Three vehicles arriving simultaneously at a mansion the world thinks is empty would register on any surveillance network running automated plate recognition along the estate roads.
Even staggered arrivals carry risk if the cars stay too long or park visibly from the road.
“How long can they stay?” I ask.
“Give it two hours at the most. After that, I want the cars moved to the service lot behind the garden wall and the estate gates reset to their normal pattern.”
Piper sits in the study where I left her, reviewing the Gideon broker file Platon compiled this morning.
She changed into a gray sweater and pulled her hair back from her face, and she appears less polished than she did last night in her black cashmere and pearls.
I shut down that observation hard and focus on logistics.
“They’ll all have opinions about her,” Platon says from behind me, keeping his voice low enough that Piper can’t hear through the closed study door. “Vera will want her gone. Angelina will want answers about you, not her. Adrian will want the legal exposure contained.”
“I know what they’ll want.”
“Do you know what you want?” He holds my gaze for a beat longer than necessary. “The woman in that study has been here less than twenty-four hours, and you’re already treating her like she belongs in the room when we make decisions.”
“She has information we need.”
“She does.” Platon picks up his laptop bag. “That wasn’t my question, and you know it wasn’t, which is why you answered the easy one.”
He walks toward the dining room to set up before I can tell him he’s wrong, which is convenient, because I don’t like to lie to my friend and avtoritet.
Vera Belousova arrives exactly on time. She’s never been late for anything in all the years I’ve known her.
She’s dressed in a dark wool coat and low heels, and she surveys the foyer like a general inspecting a garrison that’s been left unsupervised.
She ran this household when Mama was alive, held it together after Mama died, and kept the entire family network functioning through the four years I spent underground.
“The dust alone is a betrayal,” she says, running one finger along the banister. “Nobody who loved this house let it go like this. Whatever the reports claimed, the money that was supposed to keep it didn’t touch these rooms.”
“We’ll get to Adrian’s reports,” I say.
“We’ll get to them now, or I’ll pull his invoices myself.” She removes her coat and drapes it over the chair beside the door. “Where is the woman?”
“She’s in the study.”
“You gave her access to the study.” Vera doesn’t phrase it as a question.
Angelina arrives three minutes later, and she’s carrying an anger I haven’t seen from her before.
She’s thinner than she was four years ago, her dark hair is shorter, and the gray eyes she shares with me are harder than I remember.
She spent those four years moving between protected locations under identities I chose for her, living a reduced version of freedom that bore no resemblance to the life she’d built for herself before I decided to die.
“You’re alive,” she says.
“I am.”
“You’ve been alive this entire time.” She stops three feet away from me, and her composure holds because she’s a Rusakov and composure is the only inheritance our father gave us that’s actually useful.
“You let me grieve you for four years, and you let a stranger find out you’re alive before your own sister did. ”
I start to explain, and she cuts me off.
“Don’t you dare tell me the situation required it.
You made a decision about my life without asking me, and then you spent four years letting me live with the consequences.
” Her voice stays level, but she grips the strap of her bag until her fingers whiten.
She’s obviously on the verge of striking me, which I deserve.
“We’re going to have that conversation, Nikita.
I’m giving you until the end of the week. ”
She walks past me toward the dining room. Rage still emanates from her.
Adrian Tikhonov arrives last, forty minutes after Vera, through the north entrance off the access lane.
He carries a leather briefcase and moves through the foyer with unhurried confidence.
He’s walked this house for decades. He’s been managing the Rusakov estate trust since my father’s tenure and has served as sole administrator since my death was declared.
“I brought the full estate-activity reports and the verification-review paperwork,” he says, setting the briefcase on the hall table.
“The trust retains a fiduciary compliance firm to audit the estate and confirm any claim against it, and that firm exists for exactly this reason, so no one can loot a dead man’s holdings behind a forged document.
It has already flagged the irregular access.
We’ll need Piper Voss to sit for a formal verification of the marriage within the next forty-eight hours, or the firm escalates to an independent audit that pulls in the county and the tax authorities both. ”
I bring everyone into the dining room, where Platon has set up his laptop and arranged the file box contents across the long table.
Piper enters last. She stops beside the chair nearest the exit but doesn’t sit down.
She plants her feet, clasps her hands in front of her, and lifts her chin.
She maintains a careful stillness, keeps her shoulders squared, and never shifts toward the exit.
She clearly won’t let these people see her fold.
Vera gives Piper the same cold appraisal she’s used for decades when deciding who belongs at the Rusakov table.
Angelina looks from Piper to me and presses her lips together, but she keeps her conclusions to herself.
Mila, seated near the window with her medical bag at her feet, gives Piper a brief professional once-over and returns to her coffee.
Adrian opens his briefcase and arranges his documents without glancing up.
“She forged a marriage certificate, used it to access this estate, and sold pieces from Mama’s personal collection to strangers in eleven separate sales,” Vera says, addressing me as though Piper isn’t present.
“Arkadi Rusakov would have treated a forged marriage as an attack on the family name. He wouldn’t have put the forger in his study and called a meeting to discuss her future. ”
“My father would have done several things I don’t intend to repeat,” I say.
“Your father understood that the Rusakov name carries obligations.” Vera folds her hands on the table. “A forger who counterfeits that name should face consequences, not a committee.”
Angelina cuts in before I can respond. “I’m less interested in what Papa would have done than I am in why my brother let me believe he was dead for four years while a stranger with a notary stamp walked into his house and found out the truth before I did.
” She addresses the table without looking at me.
“We can discuss the woman’s future after someone explains mine. ”
The silence after that lasts three seconds.
Piper breaks it. “Every piece is traceable.” She addresses the room directly, standing her ground beside the exit chair while Vera’s stare could cut steel.
“I kept receipts, buyer contacts, and transaction records for every sale. My resale partner has the complete file. I can give you the recovery chain for every item within forty-eight hours.”
“You kept receipts of theft.” Vera turns toward Piper, finally addressing her directly, and Piper doesn’t step back.
“I’m thorough.”