Chapter 8
ADRIAN
The penthouse occupies the thirty-second floor of a building I own through a holding company registered in the Cayman Islands.
It has three bedrooms, a secure elevator requiring biometric access, and windows that run the full height of the walls overlooking Biscayne Bay.
This is my private residence when I need silence, the place I come when the estate feels too large, too populated, and I want to think without interruption.
Besides cleaning and maintenance staff, Viktor is the only other person who has ever been inside it.
I show Aurora the guest suite at the end of the hall. A bag from her apartment is already on the bed, which doesn’t surprise me. Viktor is efficient and keeps only efficient people on his team.
She walks in and stands in the center of the room without touching anything. She hasn’t spoken since we left the car. She’s clearly thinking, and it’s fascinating to watch her work. Silence first. Then evaluation. Decisions only after she’s clear on what she’s looking at.
She opens the closet, looks inside without interest, and closes it again.
She checks the bathroom door, confirms it locks from the inside, and returns to the center of the room.
The sequence is methodical. She’s noting exits and security the same way I did at the Echelon floor on my first visit.
She thinks like me. That makes me uncomfortable in ways I don’t want to examine.
“The bathroom is through there.” I lean against the door frame and keep my voice neutral. “The kitchen is stocked. The security system requires a code to enter or exit, and I’ll give you the code in the morning.”
She turns to look at me through narrowed eyes. “In the morning?”
“You’re not a prisoner, Aurora. The code is for your safety, and you’ll have it as soon as Viktor finishes updating the access protocols.”
“That sounds like something you might say right before locking the door.”
The comment stings because I understand her wariness. She watched me kill someone an hour ago, and now I’m standing in her doorway explaining security codes and stocked kitchens like I’m a hotel concierge. It’s absurd, but it’s also her new reality for now.
“If I wanted to lock you in, I wouldn’t tell you about the code.” I push off the door frame. “Get some rest. We have a lot to discuss in the morning.”
I close the door and walk down the hall to my own room, where I don’t sleep. I sit on the edge of the bed and run through the logistics of what I’ve just done instead.
I brought Aurora Moore into my personal property. Not a safehouse or a secondary location managed by Viktor’s security team. I could have chosen the apartment in Coral Gables I maintain specifically for situations that require temporary relocation of people connected to my operations.
Instead, I brought her here, to the place where I come to find peace and recenter, because I wanted her close. I dressed that want in the language of protection because protection is the only justification that doesn’t require me to admit what this actually is.
I could have sent her to the Coral Gables apartment.
Viktor would have placed two men on the building, monitored her communications, and kept her invisible until the investigation ran its course.
She would have been safe and completely separated from my personal life.
That was the correct option. That was the option any competent operator would choose when managing a witness who also happens to be someone with whom he’s sleeping.
I didn’t choose it, offer it, or even mention it existed.
Aurora asked me for safety, and I gave her my refuge instead of a secure location while telling myself the difference didn’t matter, but it does.
The Coral Gables apartment is operational infrastructure.
This penthouse is where I come when I need to think clearly, and I’ve just installed the primary obstacle to my clear thinking in the guest room down the hall.
I suddenly hear my mother’s voice in my head again. Your father confused attraction with control. I told her I wasn’t Sergei. If it started, I would see it. I’m sure of that, but…I don’t test the assumption.
By four in the morning, I’ve shifted from self-examination to damage control. Viktor arrives at the penthouse with his tablet, two phones, and a thermos of black coffee that he sets on the kitchen counter without comment.
The penthouse has an expensive coffeemaker, but he refuses to learn the functions to make coffee, espresso, and cappuccino. He once told me, “I’m not going to use a machine that’s more complicated than flying the helicopter just to make coffee.”
He’s a philistine when it comes to coffee, willing to drink any swill, so I’ve stopped urging him to try the exquisite concoctions. I have this identical machine at every property I own. Good coffee is a must, along with good vodka.
We work at the dining table with the city lights spread out below us and Aurora’s closed door visible at the end of the hall.
“Echelon’s footage is wiped, including the backup archive.
” Viktor scrolls through his report. “Aurora’s presence at the club tonight has no digital record.
Staff have been contacted and briefed. All appear cooperative and didn’t see anything.
The generous bonuses I gave each one tonight are contingent on them remembering that.
I explained the consequences would expand well beyond having to repay the money. ”
That’s the typical protocol in situations like these. We can’t control every variable, but money and threats make most fall in line. “Did any of them quit?”
“A hostess who started two weeks ago accepted the money and signed an NDA. She was shaken up by the experience and apparently realized exactly what kind of club Echelon is tonight.” He looks up to meet my gaze.
“She’ll be appropriately monitored for the next several weeks to ensure she’s not a weak link, but I don’t anticipate any problems. She was timid, so she’ll mostly likely take the money and run far from Miami. ”
I nod in satisfaction. “Dominic?”
“Everything has been staged. I sent Fedor to leave evidence of hasty packing in his condo. He packed a bag hastily, as Dominic would have, and brought it with him. He also took Dominic’s passport and left his safe open with a few stray hundred dollar bills, suggesting Dominic packed in a rush and left behind some money. ”
I nod, impressed an employee on the payroll less than a year thought of it. “That was good instinct on his part. Did you tell him to do that?”
Viktor grins like a pleased papa. “No. That was his own initiative. He’s always had a deft touch with safes, and home safes are almost always a joke. My protégé is performing better than I anticipated this early into his training.”
I settle back in the chair. “Did he find anything interesting in the safe?”
Viktor shrugs a shoulder. “The papers are in the suitcase he took, along with all the files in Dominic’s desk. We’ll need to go through them to know that.”
“Everything Fedor did sets the story we decided on, which is he ran with money he owed to dangerous people? There are no loose ends that a smart detective of Karpov might find?”
Viktor sets down his tablet. “No. The body is being sent upstate to an…associate with a pig farm, and he’ll ensure no evidence remains. The narrative we’ve created is close enough to the truth that anyone who knew him will believe it.”
“Including Karpov?”
“He’ll have no reason not to believe it, but he’ll probably suspect you found out and took him out.”
I nod, agreeing with him.
“Karpov will know Dominic is dead within forty-eight hours. The question is whether the recordings he already has are enough, or if he comes looking for the rest. He won’t care about Dominic going missing, but he will care about losing his inside man.”
“He’ll come looking.” I stand up to make another cup of espresso, waiting by the machine while Viktor refills his swill from the thermos.
I press the appropriate buttons and put my cup under the dispenser.
“The hard drive and USB backups are with Grigor. Karpov has fragments. He’ll want the complete set. ”
Viktor grimaces, which could be from the cheap coffee he just drank or his reaction to the situation. “That means he’ll want to talk to anyone who might know where the rest is stored.”
I glance down the hall as the machine dispenses my perfect espresso. “He’ll want Aurora. So will Eric Hayes.” I clench my fists at having to speak his name, because he wants her for more than just investigative reasons.
As though speaking her name summons her, the guest suite door opens at the end of the hall.
Aurora walks out wearing a T-shirt and cotton shorts from the bag Viktor’s people packed, and her hair is loose around her shoulders.
She looks smaller without the Echelon dress and the professional composure she wears like armor.
She obviously tried to sleep and couldn’t.
She gets a glass of water from the kitchen tap, drinks half of it, and sits at the far end of the dining table.
She doesn’t acknowledge Viktor beyond a glance, and Viktor doesn’t acknowledge her beyond a nod.
I take my espresso back to the table, and the three of us sit in the kitchen at four in the morning like this is a business meeting, which in some ways it is.
“I heard you say Eric’s name.” She sets down the glass. “He’s going to be the lead detective, isn’t he?”
“He volunteered.” I make my tone matter-of-fact. “His department approved it because of his familiarity with the venue.”