Page 37 of His Contract Queen

He blinks, confusion breaking through his annoyance for a second. “Yes, but?—”

I nod once. “Good. You’re in charge of them until further notice.”

He blinks again, harder this time, as if trying to confirm whether he actually heard me correctly or not. His mouth parts, disbelief overtaking the earlier irritation altogether. “Pakhan—wait. What? What do you meanuntil further notice?”

His tone edges toward mild panic, but I don’t slow as I step around him and head for my office. For the first time in years, the Bratva will have to run on autopilot for a few hours because I have more pressing matters to attend to that involve a wife who may or may not be feeding sensitive information beyond my walls.

I seal myself inside my office, twisting the simple lock that no one in this house would ever dare attempt to pick unless they had a death wish. The click echoes quietly in the room, punctuating the shift in me as I cross the room toward my desk.

This space is the only place in the estate where I allow myself to think like a true beast instead of a human being.

It takes time to break into it.

Not much, but enough to tell me someone tried to be careful about whatever contents are on the device. The phone is locked down well enough to deter an ordinary snoop, but not well enough to stop someone like me.

Methodical patience has served me better than brute force many times in the past before now. The world assumes violence solves everything, and while that is true in most cases, the art of skill is usually forgotten as a very real secondary option.

When it finally yields, the screen flickers to life.

I scroll through the only text thread on the device, my jaw hardening with each message as I start from the very first oneand work my way to the present. Detailed notes, painstakingly thorough, fill the screen.

Intel on my operations. Guard rotations. Names of my guests who come and go. The names of every person on my staff. Their behaviors and details surrounding their personal lives. Notes about the estate itself. All of it is neatly typed out, timestamped down to the second, and sent out to an unknown contact she’s labeled only with a number—1.

It’s… impressive.

Under any other circumstances, I might have admired the discipline that clearly went into this. Most people observe the world through a half-attentive lens, filtering with whatever biases or blind spots they've accumulated since birth. Every single one of these entries speaks of the opposite. She hasn’t just been watching the way my Bratva operates. She’s analyzed it in a way that is almost scary. Noticing patterns and spotting inconsistencies that even I have overlooked over the years is striking.

An eye for detail like this isn’t a skill that can be taught.

Not fully.

This is raw talent that has been honed into a deadly weapon and is now being used against me in my own home. I lean back in my chair slowly, the weight of the truth settling in my bones like winter frost.

So.

My new wife is a spy.

A slow exhale leaves me, not born from anger, and certainly not of uncertainty. No, this is something else… a puzzle piece finally snapping itself into place.

Her watchful silences have always intrigued me far more than I ever allowed myself to realize. She mastered the art of pretending she wasn’t paying attention even when she was cataloging everything.

Lingering in doorways with her eyes lowered but never truly unfocused, drifting from room to room with that delicate, trembling-girl façade—I knew all of it had been a performance. One I had enjoyed unraveling at the time.

There was a certain pleasure in exposing her small deceptions and watching the façade crack as the real Katya slipped through in flashes of defiance she fought so hard to smother. It had been a game, one I controlled and believed I understood better than she did.

But never,not once, did I imagine the performance had been designed to throw me off her trail for an entirely different reason than the one I originally suspected.

I thought she had been trying to survive me, doing her best to navigate the home of a man she believed capable of terrible things and do whatever it took to prevent herself from provoking me. It had been far too easy to chalk her behavior up to fear and the desperate, instinctual need to stay small and unnoticed in a place where power decides who lives and who doesn’t.

As I scroll further, the tone of the messages shift unexpectedly, subtle at first and then drastically. What begins as crisp, clinical reporting gradually frays into something much more emotional and urgent. Messages grow less detailed and observant,questions appearing at the end of the notes that have nothing to do with my estate at all.

Are you receiving these?

Please confirm.

I need to know you’re safe.

Hello??