Chapter 8
NIKITA
Piper is asleep in the guest room, so I don’t have to worry about not waking her.
I take the back stairs down to the lower security room before the house wakes.
She slept in my bed two nights ago, after the first time.
Last night, once we finished with the files and the widow rehearsal, she gathered the last folder, said she needed sleep before the verification, and walked back to the guest room with her decision already made.
I let her go because the alternative was asking her to stay, and I’m not ready to expose myself like that for sex. Amazing sex, but still just sex.
Sex that could become something more if I don’t maintain control. The timing is all wrong even if I wanted that kind of relationship, which I don’t.
I told myself the distance was correct. I lay awake most of last night telling myself that, and past three, I gave up and read verification statutes instead, because statutes are easier than the thing I keep refusing to name.
Platon is already at the monitors when I come in. He has coffee, and he’s wearing yesterday’s shirt, which means he slept here or didn’t sleep.
“You could go home for four hours. Get some sleep.”
“You could too, and you built a bedroom two floors up.” He doesn’t look away from the screen.
“The verification firm confirmed nine o’clock,” he says.
“Two examiners. I ran both names, and they’re legitimate estate forensics with no connection to Shilov that I can find.
They do this for banks and probate courts. They’re good at it.”
“Are they good enough to catch her?”
“They’re good enough that she can’t improvise anything they can verify.
She can color in feelings all she wants, but every checkable fact has to hold if they pull the file and audit it again six weeks from now.
” He turns his chair to face me, which he does maybe four times a year and never about scheduling.
“Before we get into their questions, I want two minutes on ours.”
I know what’s coming. I pull out a chair and sit, because refusing to sit would concede the point before he’s made it.
“You should say it.”
“Three nights ago, she was a thief on your bedroom floor. Two nights ago, she was in your bed. This morning, she has to convince two professional examiners she mourned you for four years.” Platon doesn’t raise his voice.
He never does when it matters. “I don’t care who you sleep with.
I care that your judgment is now the weak point in a plan that has to be flawless by nine o’clock, and the reason is asleep upstairs. ”
“The verification holds regardless of what happened between us.”
“The verification holds if she performs and you don’t react to her performing.
” He leans back. “Yesterday afternoon, I watched you at the kitchen island while she practiced the widow story for you. You coached her for an hour, and about forty minutes in, she stopped rehearsing and just became the woman, and you leaned toward her before you caught yourself. I was standing right there. You won’t be in the room today, so they won’t see your face.
What they’ll see is what she can deliver without you there.
You’ll have to just watch while they take her apart.
If you can’t, you’ll do something to stop it, and that’s what gives us away. ”
He’s describing the exact moment I lost track of the performance and believed her. Piper slid into the invented grief so completely yesterday that for a moment, I forgot I wrote it, and I must have shown him.
“I’ll watch from the security feed,” I say. “You stay outside the office and control who comes and goes. I won’t be visible to anyone.”
“That was always the plan. I’m telling you to watch like an operator, not like a husband whose wife is being interrogated.
” He holds the silence until I look at him.
“Your face won’t be in that room, Nikita.
Your decisions will. If they push her and you send me in, cut the interview short, feed me an answer through the earpiece, or walk through that door, the examiners learn that someone behind the glass has more at stake than an estate review.
That’s the tell. Your choices, not your face. ”
He isn’t wrong, and I don’t enjoy how well he’s read me. Four years of being unreadable, undone in under three days by a forger I caught robbing me.
“You’ve never said any of this before. In four years, you’ve never once told me who I could or couldn’t want.”
“For four years, you didn’t want anyone close enough to matter.
That kept it simple.” Platon drinks his coffee.
“You’ve always kept the people who could make you hesitate away from the dangerous work, and I built every protocol around that.
” He sets down the cup. “Now the person pulling at your judgment is standing in the middle of it, and I have to rebuild half of how I keep you alive. I’m not judging you for it.
I’m telling you Piper is affecting your decisions now, and I’d rather you knew it before nine than learn it the hard way at the wrong moment. ”
“I hear you.”
“You don’t. That’s the phrase you use to end a conversation.
” He holds my gaze until I stop pretending it’s over.
“I need you to actually hear it, because today may force you to choose between the operation and her, and I can’t run your security if I don’t know whether you’ll hold your position when it does. ”
I don’t have an answer he’ll like, so I give him the true one. “I can’t promise you which one I’ll pick anymore.”
He nods once, and there’s no satisfaction in it. He’s already resetting his plans around a variable he didn’t have yesterday.
“Did anything come from the studio overnight?” I ask, because I need the subject moved.
“It stayed quiet. The two men who photographed Maren’s binder yesterday haven’t resurfaced.
My people are on her block, the camera’s replaced, and the binder’s in our hands now instead of on a shelf facing a window.
” Platon sets the still from the old door camera beside the verification file.
“Somebody in Shilov’s orbit is building a picture of the sale chain, and today feeds it either way.
If the widow survives scrutiny, he reads it as proof you might be alive.
If you are, he’ll infer you’re protecting her and start testing the marriage for the crack.
If she fails, he learns it’s a forgery and comes at you through her.
” He closes the still. “Either result hands him something.”
“Then she doesn’t give them anything to flag.”
My phone rings against the metal table. Adrian’s name shows on the screen. I answer on speaker.
“Nikita.” He sounds like he’s been awake for hours.
“I have the examiners’ final scope, and I wanted you to have it before they arrive.
They’ll confirm the certificate against the death record, interview the widow on the marriage timeline, and reconcile the estate inventory against the last filed appraisal. ”
“You can send me the scope.”
“There’s one item I want to handle carefully.
The filed appraisal predates the liquidations.
If the examiners can’t reconcile the missing pieces, they’ll flag it as unexplained loss and open an independent audit.
” Paper shuffles on his end. “I’ve drafted a retroactive authorization.
It states that the estate administrator approved the widow’s liquidations at the time they occurred.
It resolves the inventory gap and protects her from a fraud finding.
She should sign it before the examiners arrive. ”
I look at Platon. He writes on the pad and turns it toward me. Who’s the administrator?
“Which administrator approved the liquidations, Adrian?”
He pauses, half a second, and recovers before he answers. “I did, as estate trustee. It’s a routine indemnification. The alternative is an audit that could run for months and put Mrs. Rusakov’s name in front of people you’d rather keep her away from.”
“Then you should send me the document and I’ll have it reviewed.”
The scratching of Adrian’s pen stops. “Who is reviewing it? You don’t have time before nine.”
“You should send it anyway. She signs nothing today until the outside attorney Platon retained has read it. I’m not letting you draft, deliver, and witness the same document without independent counsel.”
Adrian is quiet for a moment. “That’s your decision. I’d advise against the delay, but it’s your estate.” He ends the call.
Platon taps the pad. He wants her signature before the examiners can question him under their own authority.
“Or he’s just a lawyer closing a gap before it becomes an audit,” I write back, because one of us has to hold the other position, and this morning, it’s me.
A trustee papering over an inventory discrepancy is the most ordinary thing an estate lawyer does.
Reading treason into routine paperwork is how frightened men invent enemies, and I’ve buried people over less.
“You should send the document to my counsel. She reads it after the verification, not before, and only if the language checks out.”
“I’ve already flagged it.” Platon closes the laptop halfway. “You should go up. She needs the last details before nine, and you need to be behind the glass before the cars arrive.”
I take the back stairs to the second floor. The landing is dark, the windows facing the garden wall where the early light doesn’t reach, and I stop outside the guest room longer than the task requires, which is becoming a habit I should break.
Piper is awake and dressed when I knock and enter. She’s in the gray sweater and dark slacks Vera sent up, her hair pulled back, her hands folded, and she’s built most of the widow already.
“What happened two nights ago doesn’t change the arrangement,” she says before I’ve crossed the room. “I need you to know I’m clear on that.”