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And nobody, not one soul, put a hand on me the entire way.

Fear that led them to make smart decisions.

Four days earlier they had needed eleven men and the better part of an hour to move me twenty feet. Which meant only one thing…

Yakov had been busy.

The office was at the end of a carpeted corridor, which I found funny. Carpet. A building full of concrete and steel and men eating out of trays, and then a strip of beige carpet the moment you get within sixty feet of the man in charge.

They stopped me at the door and the older officer knocked.

“Come in,” came a voice from behind it.

And there he sat.

I had seen him once, on my first day, from behind glass, with two men on either side of him and soft hands that never stopped moving. And there on the desk, angled exactly where a visitor would be expected to admire it, was the photograph of the family I had guessed at.

I did enjoy being right.

As for the warden, well he wasn’t looking at me the same way he did that day. Not now he knew what was actually living in his prison, and what that meant for him.

The man had gone gray in a way that had nothing to do with age. His collar looked too big for him, as if he hadn’t slept or eaten that morning. His hands were also flat on the desk in front of him, which in my experience, was a typical response for someone who didn’t want you to see them shake.

He had also sent his men out, leaving himself alone so it was just him and me.

Well now, that’s interesting.

He wet his lips in a nervous gesture and invited me to sit down, holding a palm out toward the chair opposite. This wasn’t surprising, as a man of my size would intimidate another who was sitting and was forced to look up.

It almost made me want to refuse, just to make him sweat some more. However, I had known I owned him from the moment I stepped in here, so I saw little point in dragging this out longer than it needed to be. Not when I had pawns to move around the board in order to get what I wanted, which was, of course, more time with my obsession.

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked, making me smirk and reply with a dry,

“You had better tell me.”

He looked at me, and then at the door, before he drew a staggered breath as he took his hands off the desk.

“I got a phone call last night,” he said. “At my home.”

Ah, so that was what got his attention. Well done, Yakov.

“Did you now.”

“On my home line. Which is not listed.” His voice was steady enough, and I gave him a small amount of credit for that.

“The man on the other end knew my daughter’s class schedule. He knew what time her classes finish on a Wednesday. He knew the name of the coffee place she walks past on her way to the bus, and he described what she was wearing yesterday afternoon.”

Yakov. Always thorough. Never crude.

“And then he described what I was wearing,” the warden said. “In my own kitchen.”

“That does sound like an unsettling evening you suffered, Warden,” I said, and I couldn’t even pretend to sound sincere about it.

“He said no one would touch her.” He looked straight at me for the first time.

“And then he told me to send for the man with no name first thing this morning.” His throat worked. “And that I would want to be helpful.” I let a silence sit there and do its work.

That is the whole of the trade. You see, men expect shouting. They brace for a beating, they are ready for a threat, but they never know what to do with a room where nothing at all is happening. Silence fills its own gaps and builds fear better than threats spoken aloud. Silence lets you imagine your own worst nightmares.