Page 39 of Fake Marriage Mafia Triplets

“I know what it is.”

“I’m making sure you know.” He’s not arguing to win. He makes me defend a decision out loud so I can’t make it by accident. “When you came back to Water Mill, your entire plan was to reach Shilov, end him, and disappear again into a name nobody could trace. Now you’re unwinding the machine that made you untraceable and putting the family crest on a charity. Those are opposite men, and I secure them differently, so I need to know which one is giving me orders.”

I look at the stack of dissolved companies, at eleven years of careful invisibility signed away in four days. I started the closures as tactical cleanup, reducing exposure before a move. Somewhere around the fourth signature, the cleanup turned into something else, and I say the thing I have not said out loud, not to Angelina, not to Piper, not to myself until this room made me.

“I’m not planning how to survive anymore.” I keep my voice even, though I don’t feel even saying it. “I spent four years planning how to survive. I was good at it. I could have done it another forty.” I square the executed pages. “I’m planning how to live now. It turns out building a life requires me to dismantle the things survival required me to keep.”

Platon absorbs that without flinching. Then he does the thing he does when he’s decided to let me have a moment, which is to ruin it slightly so I don’t drown in it.

“You flagged the mansion’s title too,” he says.

“Once my death declaration is vacated and the trust is unwound, I want the house retitled in both our names, mine and Piper’s, recorded legally and publicly, not buried under a dead identity and three offshore holding companies.” I’ve thought about this one the most and said it the least. “The house has been held by a dead man and a lie for four years. I want it held by two living people who both have a claim to it. Hers is forged. I’m aware of the joke. I want to make it real anyway.”

“That requires you to be legally alive.”

“That happens when it’s safe. That’s the point of clearing the board first.” I meet his eyes. “I can’t put her name next to mine on a deed while mine belongs to a corpse. Everything has to come out clean and in order, and it has to come out after Shilov, not before, or I’m handing our enemies a wedding announcement and a target.”

Platon is quiet for a moment, and then asks, “If she asked you to walk away from all of it… I don’t mean the shell companies. I mean the reach for Shilov, the recovery, the whole war… If she said she wanted you out today, with none of it settled, would you go?”

“Yes.”

He blinks, because he expected a pause I didn’t take. “You didn’t hesitate.”

“I didn’t.” I hold his gaze so he can see it’s not a performance for him. “I’d want to finish it. I’d argue for finishing it, because a loose end named Rahil Shilov doesn’t stay loose. It comes back through someone we love. If she heard all of that and still said walk away, I’d walk. I made that decision before I noticed I was making it. I know because you asked and the answer was already there.”

Platon nods once and returns to his files, and I understand he wasn’t asking for me. He was closing the one variable he couldn’t close on his own, whether I could still be protected or whether I’d get Piper and myself killed reaching for a future I wouldn’t admit I wanted. He has his answer now. The situation changes when the principal has something to lose and knows it.

“That’s good,” he says and seems to mean it. “Then we clear the board in the right order. Shilov’s still active. Lazar’s still building his picture. The estate paperwork needs cleaning before you make any of it public.”

“You mean the estate administration.”

“I mean the vendor audit’s still open, and I don’t like open.” He stacks the security reports. “One of the maintenance companies bills forty thousand a year, and I can’t find another client it’s ever worked for. The structure’s more opaque than a grounds contractor needs. It’s probably nothing. Lazy bookkeeping looks exactly like this on paper. I want the ownership traced before you attach the family name to anything. I need two more weeks.”

I don’t tell him to stand down, because a clean board is what I’m asking for and the vendor is part of the board. Adrian kept the estate’s legal structure current through four years I couldn’t oversee, the trusts and filings in good enough order that Piper found a dormant property and not a distressed one. Turning a strange vendor into an accusation is how I lose the one person who understands the estate’s paper, at the exact moment I need it turned legitimate. I hold my questions until Platon hands me something solid.

“Take your two weeks,” I say. “Keep it quiet. He doesn’t know anything about it.”

Piper is in the kitchen when I come up, and for once, there’s nothing in my hands.

That’s the part I notice first, walking in. I carry no folder; no phone is open to a security feed; no problem preoccupies me. There is only a kitchen with her at the counter in one of my shirts and a pair of leggings, pouring coffee into two cups because she heard me on the stairs and knows my footsteps now as well as I know hers.

“You made it strong,” I say.

“I made it drinkable. You make it strong.” She slides one cup across the counter and fills hers mostly with hot water, a pale thing she’s been drinking for weeks instead of the strong cup she used to brew. She holds it under her chin without drinking it, which I’ve stopped commenting on. “You’ve been up since four. I heard you go down.”

“I signed away a Liechtenstein foundation my father spent most of 1994 building. It seemed like something to do while I was awake.”

“That sounds romantic.” She hooks a bare foot around the rung of the stool and settles onto it, the cup cradled against her sternum, and looks at me over the rim, letting me see that she’s glad I’m here. “You look different when you’re not worrying about everything.”

“Do I look lighter?”

“You look younger. It’s disconcerting. I’ll keep the older one for negotiations, but I like this version better.” She drinks. “What did the foundation do?”

“Moved stolen art through a clean address for thirty years.” I lean against the opposite counter, close enough to reach her and choosing not to, which has stopped being a discipline and started being a pleasure, the nearness that doesn’t have to become anything. “I’m turning it into the thing it pretended to be. It’s going to start giving pieces back.”

She freezes with the cup halfway down, and for a second, she stops performing entirely, no widow or forger, and no dry deflection loaded and ready. What’s left when all of that drops away is a woman looking at me like I’ve just done something she didn’t think men in my world were capable of doing.

“You’re giving pieces back,” she says again. “To the people they were taken from.”