Page 41 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

The north wing is warmer than the suite. Thick carpet hides the sound of our steps. Expensive art lines the walls. Doors sit in even spaces. Some have guards. Some have keypad panels. One has a small camera near the ceiling.

The house looks comfortable. The security is everywhere.

At the end of the corridor, the floor opens onto an upper landing, and I slow before either guard can tell me whether slowing is allowed.

The rail beneath my hand is carved smooth. The formal reception hall stretches below in gold-veined white marble and dark wood, so vast, my steps slow before I can stop them. Everything has been chosen, placed, and polished into elegance.

I look up, and the chandelier above steals one stupid breath from me. Even the distance between the guards looks designed. One man stands near the main doors. Another waits by the inner arch. Both are positioned where the sightlines matter most. I hate that I notice the beauty before I notice the exits.

Staff move along the edges of the hall with trays, folded linens, and lowered voices. No one hurries. No one lingers. The house doesn’t bustle. Everyone knows the rules, and no one here expects to be asked twice.

Through a set of wide doors, I see the dining room being prepared for breakfast. Staff pull white linens across the tables, set glassware in neat rows, and carry silver trays past one another without a word. The chandelier light catches on every glass and polished fork. Somewhere in this house, men are about to sit down to coffee and buttered toast while they discuss missing shipments, bribed clerks, and what can legally be done with me.

Past another archway, three men cross toward the legal wing with folders tucked under their arms, their pace measured enough to pass for boredom. Two women in dark dresses carry fresh linens through a side passage, turn at the far wall, and disappear behind a flush panel I almost miss.

My attention snaps to it.

The panel sits between two strips of carved wood, seamless unless someone uses it. Service access. Staff route. Maybe kitchen to laundry, maybe laundry to residential wing, maybe one more way through the house that doesn’t belong to guests or prisoners. I look back across the hall.

Main doors with two guards. Inner arch with one. Legal wing to the left. Dining room ahead. Service panel on the far wall. Upper corridor behind me. Cameras tucked into trim where the chandelier glare makes them harder to spot. The house shows me beauty, and I turn it into a map.

I reach for the stair rail.

Square Face steps in front of me.

“No stairs,” Scar Chin says.

“I was admiring the craftsmanship.”

“No stairs.” His mouth is set. There’s no crossing that boundary.

Fine. If down is forbidden, I can still look. I move to the rail and look down before either guard can decide that looking is also forbidden. Below, a maid adjusts flowers in the reception hall. White roses. Dark ranunculus. Elena’s choice, probably. Another woman appears from the eastern hall, older, with a clipboard in one hand, glasses hanging from a chain. Mrs. Wentworth. She speaks to a staff member, points once toward the dining room, then toward the eastern hall. Everyone obeys without fuss.

Past her, on a console table, fresh white flowers sit beside a framed photograph turned slightly toward the inner hall. A tiny wooden rattle rests beside the vase, polished clean and completely out of place among the marble, wood, and glass. The photograph shows a dark-haired woman, a severe, handsome man, and a newborn bundled in pale wool. Family, displayed where armed men have to walk past it.

Elena.

I don’t see her, yet I feel her fingerprints everywhere.

I take two steps closer to the next corridor and read the brass label before Square Face can block my view.

Women’s Wing.

A maid slips past with folded linens and a ring of access cards clipped to her belt, taps one card to the reader, and disappears inside. No guard follows her.

A familiar voice reaches me from the far end of the landing. “You’re far from your suite.”

Dmitri stands near the staircase in black trousers and a black shirt, freshly shaved, hair still damp at the edges. Morning has made him harder to look at for long. My eyes move from the clean line of his jaw to the width of his shoulders, then settle on the blue eyes that make my worst decisions look tempting.

His gaze drops to my shirt, then lifts slowly back to my face. He knows I was looking at him. Worse, he knows I liked what I saw. My body answers before I can stop it, and heat gathers low and angry while the memory of his hands comes back.

One night. Five years. Still, my body has the nerve to remember him faster than my pride can object.

“I was told I could walk,” I say.

“Within limits.”

“Limits should come with signage.” I lift a hand toward the brass label. “Possibly a snack table.”