The gates stay shut. More men patrol the grounds. I hear boots on gravel at all hours now, low voices outside windows, radios crackling in the dark. Papa doubled security before dinner that same night and added another layer by morning. New cars at the front. New men at the side entrance. New rules about where the children can go and when.
Everyone is pretending that means we are safer.
I’m not stupid enough to believe that.
Because if someone could fire into our lunch from inside the compound, then the problem is not outside the gates.
It’s already here.
That thought has not left me once in three days.
Neither has Roman.
I hate that just as much.
Because the fear should have burned everything else out of me. It should have made the whole mess simple. Dangerous man, dangerous life, dangerous consequences. Keep away. Lock the door. Protect the children. End of story.
Instead, my mind keeps returning to stupid things.
The way he protected the children, not thinking twice about himself. The way he looked at me.
The fact that he could have died on our lawn, and I cannot think about it for longer than five seconds without my chest tightening like a fist.
I sit at my vanity table in the late afternoon light and stare at my own reflection without really seeing it. My hair is half-pinned, because I started brushing it ten minutes ago and then forgot what I was doing. The room is warm. The curtains are half-drawn. Somewhere down the hall, Sofia is laughing at something, which means she has recovered fully and is once again a threat to order.
I should be comforted by that.
Instead, I’m thinking about my father.
Papa barely looked rattled that day.
Angry, yes. Offended, certainly. But not surprised enough. Not shocked enough for a man whose grandchildren were nearly shot in his own garden. He was too quick to rage at the security team, too quick to issue orders, too quick to control the scene.
As if he had expected something. Not this exact thing, maybe. But something close enough that his body did not need time to catch up.
The thought has been sitting in me like poison.
Today it finally curdles into action.
I stand, cross the room, and grab my coat.
If I stay here another hour, I will start thinking in circles again. I need to speak to Roman. Not in this house. Not with Vika listening at doors and Papa reading faces at dinner. Somewhere outside. Somewhere I can ask the questions that have been gnawing at me without feeling every wall answer back.
I make it as far as the side corridor before one of the new guards steps in front of me.
“Miss Markova.”
I stop.
He’s broad-shouldered, younger than the others, with the expression of a man trying too hard to look respectful.
“I’m going out.”
He doesn’t move. “Your father said no one leaves without clearance.”
I stare at him. “I’m not no one.”
He almost smiles, then thinks better of it. “I still need the clearance.”
