Page 10 of Fake Marriage Mafia Triplets

I look at Piper. She meets my stare without flinching, still standing, still holding the posture she chose when she walked into this room. She’s scared. I can see it in the rigid stillness of her hands and the careful way she plants her weight, distributing it evenly so her legs won’t shake.

She’s also furious that her continued survival depends on people she’s never met making decisions about her life. That’s clear to me. I catch myself watching her composure instead of reviewing Adrian’s verification timeline, and I force my attention back to the documents on the table.

I know that fury. I built my entire exile around it.

The strategic calculation takes less than a minute, but I let the silence hold because the decision needs to feel considered rather than impulsive, even if I know where it’s going before I start. Piper’s forgery is already filed. Retracting it would trigger the same investigation Adrian described, and the investigation would expose the estate’s dormant holdings, Platon’s monitoring operation, and eventually, that the man declared dead four years ago never died. Keeping the forgery intact creates manageable risk and provides immediate cover for both the verification review and Piper’s presence at the mansion. The lie she built to rob me now protects us both.

“The world will continue believing Piper Voss is my widow. She’ll perform that role for the verification team and help us recover every item she sold. Inside this house, she remains my wife on paper.”

“How long will this arrangement last?” Vera asks.

“The arrangement lasts until Rahil Shilov is dead.”

Vera stands, picks up her coat, and pauses in front of Piper long enough to read her face at close range. Whatever she sees doesn’t soften her, but she doesn’t deliver the dismissal I expected. She walks toward the kitchen without conceding anything.

Angelina pushes back from the table. “I have questions about the logistics, and I have questions about the last four years. I intend to ask both before the week is over.” She pauses beside me on her way out. “You’d better have answers I can live with, Nikita, or you really will be dead.”

Adrian collects his documents slowly, slides the verification timeline toward me, and excuses himself through the north entrance. Mila leaves her card on the table beside Piper’s standing position and follows Vera toward the kitchen, murmuring something about the baseline examination she’ll conduct tomorrow morning.

Platon catches my eye from across the table. He reads what I’m not saying, the same as he has for ten years, and has the decency not to say it out loud. He nods once and closes his laptop.

Piper Voss will remain my widow in public and my wife on paper inside this house. I’m converting a con artist’s forgery into operational cover, and the strategic logic is sound.

The part I’m not examining is why the word “wife” didn’t feel entirely strategic when I said it. It doesn’t feel intrusive or burdensome either.

That’s not good or normal.

5

PIPER

The meeting ended this morning, and my legs still ache from standing through it. Nearly an hour on my feet while four strangers and the two men who’d caught me argued about whether I deserved protection or punishment, and I refused to sit down and give Vera the satisfaction of watching me fold. They put me in a locked guest room afterward, and I spent the day listening to the house move around me and marking exits I have no intention of using yet.

Nikita’s private office is smaller than the study, tucked behind the kitchen where the windows face the garden wall. Darkness has swallowed the garden beyond the glass now, and the only light comes from the desk lamp and his laptop screen. Everyone else has gone. Adrian left the verification timeline on the dining-room table on his way out this afternoon, and Nikita sent for me an hour ago, after Platon’s lender trace came back.

Now it’s just Nikita and me in a room that smells like dust and cold coffee.

“Platon confirmed the connection an hour ago,” he says, turning his laptop toward me. The diagram runs from Callum’s lender through two intermediaries to a name I don’t recognize. “Your brother’s lender doesn’t operate independently. The debt traces to Shilov’s lower-level money chain.”

I keep my face still because I’ve spent the last two hours practicing that skill, even as the cold sinks into me and my hands want to curl. “Callum doesn’t know that.”

“Callum borrowed money from a lender, and that lender borrows from Rahil Shilov’s people.” Nikita turns the laptop back toward himself. “Shilov knows your name through the estate sale and forged marriage. He also knows the Voss name because your father created provenance records and asset-transfer documents for his network. Your brother’s lender gives Shilov a second path to your family.”

The mention of Dorian stops me. “My father worked for Shilov?”

“Your father provided forgery services for Shilov’s art and luxury-goods operations. The connection predates your estate work by years.” He waits for a second so I can absorb that. “Platon didn’t guess it. Two of the recovered provenance packets in Shilov’s old network carry the same construction as the marriage certificate you forged for me. Once Platon had your father’s name, the pattern matched work that’s been moving through Shilov’s people for a decade.”

I consider that for a moment, and it rearranges things I thought I understood about my father. He taught me to forge because he loved me. He also forged for the man now hunting my brother, but he never mentioned his client list. The curriculum he left me came with debts I didn’t know I’d inherited. My father was generous that way.

“You’re telling me my brother was already exposed before I robbed your estate.”

“Yes, but Rahil had no reason to personally look at him then. The exposure has layers, and your estate job activated the layer Shilov was watching most closely.”

I get to my feet, needing to do something. I’m angry at Nikita for delivering this like a briefing. I’m angry at Dorian for dying and leaving his connections behind like buried ordnance. Mostly, I’m angry at myself for walking into a trap that was half-built before I was old enough to read. “You’re using my family as leverage.”

“I’m showing you the chain so you can see it for yourself.” He opens the file box beside his desk and pulls out the buyer route, the Shilov-linked broker profile, and Adrian’s estate alert. He sets each document on the desk between us. “You can verify every connection.”

The chain is documented and undeniable, and the anger I want to aim at Nikita has nowhere to go, because he didn’t create the danger. I activated it, and Callum was already standing inside the blast radius before I filed a single document.