Chapter 16
KATIE
Artur calls crawling beneath the bed at two in the morning poor sleep.
He says it while shaving, as if the correct phrasing can turn bloodless knuckles and a splinter beneath one nail into ordinary restlessness.
I stand at the safe-house bathroom counter in a bra and black trousers, blending concealer beneath my eyes. The room is narrow enough that Artur’s bare chest brushes my shoulder whenever he rinses the razor. Steam from his shower still clouds the upper corners of the mirror.
“Poor sleep usually stays on the mattress,” I say.
“The room was dark.”
“The floor was easier to find?”
Artur draws the razor down his cheek. White foam parts beneath the blade, leaving damp skin behind. “Apparently.”
His voice makes the subject sound closed while his body disagrees, the muscles along his right side remaining tight whenever he reaches toward the sink.
I could ask whose body he was searching for beneath twisted metal; the copied request already supplied the name.
He looks at me through the mirror, his mouth set in the same hard line he used when I asked last night.
I turn back to my makeup. “If poor sleep starts dismantling furniture, it has to replace what it breaks.”
Some of the tension leaves his shoulders. “The bed remains functional.”
“Your review is compromised. You’ve declared ownership of half.”
“You occupied that half in protest.”
The border argument has survived another night.
Artur rinses the razor, and water travels over his fingers before falling into the basin, clear against the dark hair along his forearms. From this angle, I see the pale line near his temple continue beneath his hair and the slight bend where his nose healed imperfectly.
His beard comes away in slow strokes, revealing the hard plane of his cheek without softening his mouth.
He watches me watch him.
The mirror reverses the scar near his temple, putting the pale line on the wrong side of his face, and water beads along the hollow beneath his cheekbone. When he tilts his chin, shaving foam outlines the strong column of his throat before the razor clears it away.
My attention travels lower: the dark hair on his chest remains damp, narrowing toward the towel wrapped around his hips. A drop slips between the muscles of his stomach and disappears beneath white cotton.
Artur catches the direction of my gaze, and his hand pauses beside his jaw.
“Your eyeliner is uneven,” he says.
I lean closer to the mirror. Both lines match. “Your face is dishonest.”
“The left side is thicker.”
I lift the pencil, then catch the restrained movement at the corner of his mouth.
“You’re trying to make me ruin it.”
“I’m participating in the shared-bathroom routine.”
I press the pencil into his hand. “Improve it.”
Artur looks at the black tip as though I handed him an unfamiliar weapon. “I remove things from faces.”
“A limited philosophy.”
He returns the pencil and bends to rinse his jaw. I finish the line while his reflection remains close behind mine, both of us sharing the mirror without surrendering space.
At Velvet Fortune, the damaged private room has been stripped to the walls. New mirror panels wait in wooden frames along the corridor. George stands inside the room with Boris while three work lights rest on the floor.
Artur stops beside the replacement chair. “Show me what the new panels would hide if the chair moves again.”
The attack itself is settled: the men prepared the room before my name entered the draw, then adjusted after I moved Artur. Today we are testing the rebuilt room, because replacing broken glass without changing the sightlines would preserve the same blind angles that let two armed men reach us.
George and Boris lift one replacement panel into the proposed center position. I switch on a work light at the public door, pause, bring a second to life at the service opening, then aim the third into the mirror so three white circles mark the routes the room must never hide.
Artur sits in the replacement chair with his hands on the leather arms, his knees apart. The sight of him there pulls a hot thread through my stomach despite the bare walls and two men pretending not to understand what a lap dance involves.
“The chair began here,” I say, dragging it diagonally until its feet settle into the pale marks left by the original.
In the temporary reflection, George’s chest appears where only his sleeve showed before, but the service opening narrows to a sliver.
“The proposed seam trades one blind angle for another.”
I put one knee beside Artur’s hip, and his hand closes around my waist before I settle across his thighs, drawing me down against the erection his trousers fail to disguise.
“Necessary?” Boris asks.
“The chair requires weight,” Artur replies, keeping his voice admirably grave.
“The chair has weight,” Boris says.
I hide my smile against Artur’s shoulder, then rotate my hips through the turn that exposed the shooter’s elbow during my first dance.
Heat gathers between my legs when Artur’s fingers tighten at my side, but the center panel now clips one of the three reflected lights before my body completes the movement.
“Move the center seam six inches toward the public door,” I say as I stand. “Then the entrance stays visible when the chair turns, and the service opening never disappears behind the panel edge.”
Artur studies the three circles before looking to Boris. “Move the seam. Put a narrow camera above the service panel, and keep its reader outside the mirrored line.”
The suspicion attached to my first night is already gone. What remains is more useful: the attack has become a blueprint for a room that won’t hide danger from the next woman who enters it.
I show Boris one new detail before we leave.
When a dancer turns, she doesn’t stare at an entire reflection.
She catches one seam, one edge of light, then returns to it before her body finishes moving.
He tries the turn himself, discovering that armed refrigerators possess poor rotational balance, and George laughs until he has to lean against the wall.
“That is why I saw the shooter first,” I say after Boris recovers. “I was using the room. Artur was watching me.”
Artur’s gaze travels down my body with open satisfaction. “I stand by the decision.”
The mansion kitchen is louder than the club by midnight.
Cherry sits on the central counter eating noodles from a bowl while the housekeeper argues that plates exist for a reason. Niko has removed his syrup-stained shirt cuff but saved it in a plastic evidence bag, claiming an investigation remains open.
Boris stands at the stove cooking eggs because he rejected the housekeeper’s method. Two kitchen assistants lean against the pantry door, offering criticism he ignores.
No one stops talking when I enter.
That may be the clearest evidence that the household has adopted me.
My phone vibrates with a transfer confirmation before I reach the counter.
This morning I moved part of the marriage payment into an account at a bank with no Dymov ownership, paid the last electric balance from my apartment, then set aside enough to make leaving a choice rather than an emergency.
The remaining number still contains more zeroes than my old life knew what to do with, but the smaller balance in my own account feels real because I chose where it went.
Cherry glances at the screen. “You finally touched the two million?”
“Some of it. The rest can sit there until I decide what I want.”
She bumps her shoulder against mine, understanding the difference between being given money and using it without permission; I don’t buy anything dramatic.
I simply delete the overdue notice that has followed me through three email accounts, then put my phone away before wealth becomes the only interesting subject in the room.
The transfer also covered an evaluation for my knee at a dance clinic in Midtown, booked under Alba rather than Dymova.
I chose the therapist, the appointment time, and the account that paid her.
Artur can send guards to the lobby if the threat requires it, but he can’t turn the appointment into another gift I owe him for accepting.
“What did you buy yourself?” Cherry asks.
“Forty-five minutes with a woman who understands why dancers lie about joint pain.”
“Sensual.”
“At my previous income, competent medical care qualified as pornography.”
Her laugh is quick, but the relief beneath it lasts longer. Cherry watched me work through pain because missing a shift meant losing rent money. Having an appointment I can keep without choosing between groceries and a copay feels more extravagant than the borrowed diamonds locked at the mansion.
Cherry holds out her bowl. “Taste this. Boris thinks pepper is a personality.”
I take one noodle. “He’s wrong, but the eggs look frightened enough.”
Boris turns one with unnecessary force. “Breakfast requires discipline.”
“It’s midnight,” Niko says.
“The menu at Dally’s established that time is irrelevant.”
Niko considers that with the seriousness of a new doctrine.
I take a place beside Cherry, and she tells me her preliminary portfolio review went well, though one online instructor wants more work on mature skin. The housekeeper immediately volunteers three women from her church and begins assigning them appointments before Cherry can respond.