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“I’m evaluating...” A yawn interrupts me. “...with my eyes closed.”

“So I see.”

“I am perfectly cap—” The sentence dissolves into another yawn, and this time my eyes do close. The chair shifts gently.

Strong hands slide carefully beneath my knees and behind my back.

For one disoriented second, I think I’m dreaming, and my muscles tighten. Then that scent invades my mind, and the room tilts gently as I’m lifted.

I don’t have the energy to protest, already slipping into sleep. My cheek finds the warmth of his shoulder, and somewhere through the haze of exhaustion I register the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath the fabric of his shirt.

The hallway lights drift overhead in soft pools of gold.

I should tell him to put me down.

But sleep wins before the words ever reach my lips.

Chapter 14

Vasily

Late spring has a way of making people forget how dangerous the Adirondacks can be. The lake looks deceptively calm beneath a soft blue sky. Families crowd the sidewalks with ice cream dripping onto little sneakers, even though it’s barely above 60 degrees. Cyclists weave through downtown. Tourists photograph the Olympic ski jumps as though history alone built this town.

They never notice the men watching them. They certainly never notice me.

I spend the morning making my usual rounds. Deep Waters’s newest luxury lodge is finally ahead of schedule despite the government’s seizure of several financial records. A property manager needs approval for an additional dock. One of our foremen is replacing a roofing subcontractor who disappeared without warning.

Legitimate business.

The kind that keeps hundreds of people employed and the tax collectors satisfied.

By noon, I’ve crossed over into the less respectable side of my empire.

Art meets me inside an aging warehouse outside Wilmington, where inventory is moving through three different shell companies before sunset. Everything checks out. No missing shipments. No unexplained expenses.

Five days ago, none of this would’ve held my attention. Now it almost feels manageable.

A large part of that belongs to Matilda.

The memory of her lax body pressed against my chest as I carried her back to her side of the lake house overrides the shelving and forklifts in front of me. I shake my head, blinking it away…that silk sliding beneath my fingers, the sound she made when I laid her in the bed.

Every evening since then, another legal memo appears on my desk.

Every morning, another request for documents. They’re looking for corporate minutes, bank authorizations, vendor contracts. Matilda is looking just as hard.

Discovery has begun in earnest, and she’s tearing through years of company records with an appetite I’ve rarely seen outside Ariadna.

Beaumont was wrong about one thing: our money was never going to be enough to get Mikhail released. The court had ordered him held on the expanded charges, and Beaumont’s answer to the flight argument barely amounted to a promise that he would stay put.

Matilda went very quiet when she read the application.

Then she’d politely explained its failings over three pages of legal analysis.

She’s already preparing a renewed application for release with actual safeguards while dissecting every invoice tied to the renovation. I’ve barely seen her.

Arthur tells me she insists on taking most of her meals upstairs, usually beside stacks of documents that continue multiplying faster than anyone can organize them. A workaholic.

The word almost makes me smile.