Page 59 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

The door closes softly after her, and I stand there for a second, suspicious of eggs. Then the smell gets to me. The first bite of toast and egg nearly makes me close my eyes. Warm butter, salt, crisp potato, coffee dark enough to argue back.

When I finish, my hands have stopped shaking.

I step into the small living room of the suite dressed in black pants and a soft sweater someone chose for what they thought prisoners like. At the door, I pause and wait for the familiar shape of men outside. The door just opens.

No guards stand in the hall. I look left, then right. Nothing.

Well, not nothing. Cameras remain tucked into trim, small and patient. At the far entrance to the north wing, two guards stand near the archway, giving me space without giving me freedom.

Even so, space counts.

I walk. The north wing looks different without men breathing down my neck. Cream walls, dark runners, framed winter landscapes, side tables with fresh flowers, doors set far enough apart to imply secrets. A maid carrying towels nods to me. An older staff member steps aside with a tray and says, “Good morning, Miss,” as if I am a tourist up here for breakfast.

My shoulders loosen before I can stop them. It scares me more than the locks.

The corridor opens into a small interior balcony above the reception hall. From up here, the marble floor looks like a checkerboard people move across. Two men in dark suits pass beneath me with files tucked under their arms, heading toward the legal wing without looking up. At the far end, Mrs. Wentworth speaks to a young staff member beside a flower arrangement that screams RICHES.

Nobody stops me from looking. After a minute, I move on and find the library doors half open. No guard blocks them, so I step inside.

The shelves climb neatly along the walls, arranged with almost theatrical taste. Russian history. Romanovs. Soviet collapse. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov. Pushkin in several editions. Folklore collections with gilt lettering. English translations lined beside Russian originals.

Everything is beautiful, and the room has life in it, but it still doesn’t feel personal. The books sit in clean rows by size and subject. No cracked paperback leans out of place, no old receipt marks a page, and nothing looks like someone grabbed it, used it, and shoved it back.

I walk to the rounded window.

Beyond the reinforced glass and black bars, the rear grounds stretch white under the winter sun. Near the tree line, one rifleman comes off rotation with frost on his coat and dark gloves hooked around the strap of his weapon. Another man steps into his place. They exchange a nod, then a few words I can’t hear through the glass.

Morning rhythm, Volkov edition.

My chest tightens, and I step back from the window before I can stand there feeling sorry for myself.

Someone coughs near the door.

Scar Chin stands there with his hands visible and his face almost polite. “Miss O’Connell.”

“Please tell me no one has filed a complaint.”

His mouth bends. “Antonov asks for you in the comms room. For work.”

Asks. Not orders. I hear the difference.

“You can come with me when ready,” he adds.

I look once across the books, then at the barred window and the guarded grounds beyond it. Elena has given me space, breakfast, and choices I can name. That doesn’t make me free.

“I’m ready,” I say.

The comms room looks different when I walk in, and the difference is the men. Yesterday, I was Patrick’s sister, dragged in with his mess attached to me and dropped on Dmitri’s table. Today, I can help them solve a problem, or I can make the problem worse in a way they’ll have to respect.

That suits me better.

I know rooms like this. Cold vents, hard light, screens nobody turns off, men mistaking tension for control.

This is work. Screens line the far wall, flipping between gates, corridors, route maps, access logs, and columns of numbers I don’t have enough time to read. My pulse steadies for the first time all morning.

A long table runs through the center covered with paper folders, encrypted drives, half-empty coffee cups, and keyboards worn shiny at the edges.

Petrov is there with two files open and one finger pressed against a date. Dmitri stands beside a chair, and when I come in, he pulls it out an inch. Every man sees it.