Chapter Twenty-three
Inna Grace
Dmitri never returned after he left three nights ago. Some things were strange enough to stay with you, and a man leaving his house at two in the morning was one of them. That was why I asked Caitlin to meet me today.
I sat across from her in a cafe, both hands wrapped around a coffee cup, trying to work out how to get answers from her.
My eyes moved to Anton, two tables away. He was staring at his phone, but his casualness didn’t match his aura. The black suit and the earpiece tucked behind his right ear did everything to sell him out.
Caitlin followed my gaze and laughed. “You’re uncomfortable.”
“Is it that obvious?” I asked. “What am I now, a celebrity?”
“After what happened last time, going around without him would be a problem.”
I sighed. “Wearing that necklace got me into serious trouble. What does everyone expect, that I would walk around the city wearing twenty million dollars like it was nothing?”
“It’s not only the necklace.” Caitlin nodded toward my left hand. “Your husband runs a billion-dollar company and owns most of the commercial buildings in this district. That ring alone could buy me a car.”
I stared at the ring. “No.”
She took a sip of her drink, watching me with quiet amusement. “People know that kidnapping you means their phone call gets answered.”
Goosebumps moved up my arms. I had seen this in films where wealthy families received ransom calls with demands and instructions. Apparently, I now lived inside that genre.
“So there’s no freedom,” I said.
“The pros are many,” Caitlin offered.
She wasn’t wrong, considering we were once homeless and with nothing.
“Tell me about the mansion.” Caitlin leaned closer. “The last time I was there was for an event. The beachside is something else.”
That opened up a conversation I didn’t know I wanted to have.
I told her about the way the ocean sat at the bottom of everything, visible from almost every window.
The private stretch of beach felt like it belonged to a different world entirely.
The balcony off the third floor, where the morning light came in and spread across the room before the rest of the house woke.
“Nobody lets me do anything either,” I added. “I reach for a plate, and someone materializes beside me and takes it.”
Caitlin laughed.
“But Grandma is actually nice,” I continued. “She told me I could go out whenever I wanted as long as Anton came.”
“For your safety,” Caitlin said.
“Yes.” I glanced at Anton again. At first, I took him for a chauffeur following orders. It turned out the freedom was real, just accompanied.
The conversation moved on, and we talked easily, the way we found we could do with little effort. But the question that brought me here sat quietly at the back of everything, waiting.
If Ivan worked alongside Dmitri the way Anton worked alongside me, then wherever Dmitri went, Ivan likely went too. Which meant Caitlin might know something, not the details, but enough. Unless, of course, Dmitri spent his nights visiting witches who required their guests to arrive unaccompanied.
I took another sip of cappuccino to bury the smile before it reached my face. Here I sat in a cafe trying to determine whether my husband moonlighted as a vigilante.
I turned my cup and kept my expression neutral, the way you kept your face when you were thinking about something you didn’t want visible.
The question was how to get to it without Caitlin mentioning to Ivan that I asked, and Ivan mentioning it to Dmitri.
I kept my attention on Caitlin and let the conversation carry us a little further before I made my move.
“So,” I said, keeping my voice at the temperature of mild curiosity. “Dmitri got pulled away for work three days ago.”
Caitlin glanced up from her cup. “Really?”
“Hmm.” I lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “He left in the middle of the night. I imagine Ivan must despise those calls. Being dragged out at strange hours, half asleep, probably furious about it.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Ivan?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “He never went anywhere at strange hours. He has been coming home as usual.”
Oh.
So Dmitri left without his bodyguard.
“Thank God,” I said as though the information was a minor footnote and not a door swinging open onto a hallway full of new questions. I lifted my cup and let the coffee warm my throat while my mind started sorting them by most alarming.
When I lowered the cup, my gaze settled on Caitlin’s face. Specifically, the faint discoloration beneath her left eye was a bruise. The makeup over it was good work, but the light in the cafe was honest.
“What happened to your eye?”
Her fingers stilled around the cup. “What?”
“The bruise,” I said. “You nearly covered it.”
She looked down, as if the question had caught her off guard and left her without an answer. Her smile resurfaced a beat later, but it arrived slightly misaligned, the corners not quite reaching where they were supposed to go. “You noticed,” she said. “I thought I’d done better than that.”
“The light in here is unforgiving,” I offered, and she traced the rim of her cup with her thumb. “Was it from the day we got attacked?” I asked.
“No.” A small laugh left her lips. “I walked into the fridge door.”
I hissed through my teeth. “Awful. Sorry.”
She nodded, and we moved on to another conversation easily. She didn’t seem okay talking about it anyway.
The cafe filled and emptied twice over before either of us thought to check the time.
The afternoon dissolved the way good afternoons do, without announcing itself.
One conversation folded into the next. Caitlin was easy in a way I hadn’t expected to find her.
I was glad I had made a friend with whom we could talk so easily.
She checked her phone and groaned. “I should go before Ivan convinces himself I’ve been kidnapped.”
I smiled. “Do you need an extraction team?”
“Please. He’d lead it himself and spend the entire drive complaining about the traffic on the bridge.”
We laughed and pushed back our chairs, gathered our bags, and stepped out into the evening air. Anton had already brought the car and opened the back door for me.
Caitlin glanced at him, then back at me, grinning. “Very subtle.”
“Practically invisible,” I agreed, and we laughed again at Anton’s expense, who, to his credit, showed nothing.
She adjusted the strap of her purse and turned to me. “Thanks for this. I was going slowly mad at home.”
“We should do this more often,” I said.
“We absolutely should.” Her eyes brightened. “Actually, I have some designs I’ve been working on. I want your opinion on them.”
“You design?”
“I love fashion,” she said. “You’d be the first to see them. Don’t tell anyone. Ivan especially cannot know.”
She laughed, but I caught the thread beneath it, the instinct to keep something private away from a particular person. I filed it beside the bruise and said nothing about either. “Our secret then.”
She nodded and glanced toward Anton. “You should go. That man has been standing there long enough.”
I stepped forward to hug her, and she held on for a second before letting go. After the hug, she was easily swallowed by the street crowd, her purse swinging at her hip. I watched until she disappeared before turning toward Anton.
“Ready to go, ma’am?” He asked.
“Yes.” I slid into the car, and Anton closed the door for me.
I settled into the back seat and watched the city move past the window, people spilling out of offices and cafes and folding themselves into the rush. I may have created suspicion where there was none. Maybe Dmitri went to work, an actual emergency, the kind that didn’t require his bodyguard.
“Is there somewhere else you’d like to go, ma’am?” Anton asked, and a thought arrived fully formed, the way bad ideas usually do.
“What if we stopped by Dmitri’s office?”
“You wish to visit Mr. Konstantinov?”
“Yes.” I bit my lip and nodded. “Just briefly.”
“Alright.” He returned his attention to the road, asking nothing further.
A quiet unease settled in my stomach as the city scrolled past. This was possibly a terrible idea. Walking unannounced into Dmitri’s office was the move that either landed perfectly or didn’t land at all. I leaned back against the seat and decided I was willing to find out which one.
I was also, if I was being truthful with myself, curious what his face would do when he saw me showing up in his office.