I look at the chair she sat in this morning. The city outside is going about its Saturday, indifferent as always.
I pick up the Hale Group folder and get back to work.
19
CELINE
Two menin the lobby I don’t recognize.
That’s the first thing. Tuesday morning, eight fifteen, I come off the elevator, and they’re positioned near the entrance in the way that people are positioned when positioning is the point. Not standing. Stationed. I’ve been in this building long enough to know the difference. I walk past them to the reception desk. Oliver is already watching me with an expression that says he has opinions about recent developments and is deciding whether this is the moment to share them.
I give him a look that says it is not.
I go upstairs.
The second thing is the car. Black, different plates from the ones Roman usually arranges, parked at the curb when I came in this morning. I noticed it the way I notice everything. Filed it. Kept walking.
The third thing is Roman himself. He moves through the forty-fourth floor on Tuesday with a frequency that is different from his usual. The difference between a man doing his job and a mandoing his job while managing something adjacent to it that he has not been asked to discuss.
I sit at my desk. I open Zane’s correspondence for the morning. I start moving through it.
Third email down.
It’s from Alexei’s office, copied to Zane’s account, which runs through mine for filing. A document is attached. I open it because opening attachments is my job. I read the header.Succession Structure Amendment, Volkov Holdings Internal Council Documentation. I read the date it was initiated.
Saturday.
The morning I sat across from his desk.
I read the first paragraph. My name is in the second sentence. Not as his assistant. Not as a corporate designation. As the mother of the incoming heir to the Volkov succession line. The language is formal, dense, the kind that took a team of lawyers several hours to construct.
He called Alexei the same day.
I asked him not to do anything with it yet. He said okay. He called Alexei the same day.
I close the email. I close the attachment. I straighten the items on my desk in the same order I always do. My coffee cup, my notepad, and the pen I keep on the right side. I sit very still for a moment.
Then I pick up the printed copy of his afternoon schedule, stand up, walk across the floor, and knock once on his door.
“Come in,” he says.
He’s on a call.
He looks up when I open the door. I hold up the schedule. He nods, which means leave it on the desk, which I do. I’m turning to go when he says something into the phone that means, “Give me a moment,” and sets it face down.
“The two men in the lobby,” I say.
“Additional security.”
“Since when?”
“Since this week.”
“Why?”
He looks at me with the steadiness he uses when he has decided how much he’s going to give before the conversation starts. “There’s a threat I’m managing.”
“What kind of threat?”
