I’m halfway down the corridor toward the garden doors when I hear Sofia’s voice somewhere close.
“I know you’re there!”
I stop.
Then I hear Roman’s voice, lower, amused in spite of himself.
“I don’t think you do.”
It’s coming from the old morning room near the terrace.
I push the door open carefully.
At first I see only sunlight across the carpet and one of the curtains moving in the breeze from the cracked French doors. Then Sofia pops out from behind the sofa with a triumphant shout.
“You lose!”
Roman is crouched behind an armchair, which is ridiculous for a man his size and somehow does nothing to reduce the effect of seeing him there.
He looks up and sees me. Something in my chest twists.
Because for a second, before he schools his face, he looks almost happy.
Sofia points at him accusingly. “He cheated.”
Roman rises. “I adapted.”
“That’s cheating.”
“That’s survival.”
She seems to consider this. “Fine. But next time I get to count slower.”
There is such easy nonsense in the room that I have to stop myself from just standing there and watching it.
Roman glances at Sofia, then at me, and says, “She’s been looking for me.”
The words are simple.
The way he says them isn’t.
Sofia runs over to me and grabs my hand. “He hides well but not perfectly.”
“I’m sure that was very disappointing.”
“It was educational,” she says importantly.
Roman’s mouth shifts.
I look at him then, and something in me gives a little. Because this is insane.
This man is ruthless. Dangerous. Feared. A man who can walk into a council room and make old predators sit up straighter. A man my father should never have allowed within reach of this family if he knew the whole truth.
And he’s standing in the middle of my mother’s morning room having just played hide-and-seek with my daughter as if that’s a thing men like him do between business calls and blood debts.
Vika finds us in the morning room before I can come up with an excuse to take the children upstairs and lock the door.
“There you are,” she says, as if we’ve all been delaying her plans on purpose. “Lunch is set on the lawn.”
