"Not tonight."
Small mercy.
I head to Mila's room anyway, needing to see for myself.
Her door is slightly ajar, soft nightlight spilling into the hallway. I push it open quietly and step inside.
Mila's asleep, small body curled tight under blankets decorated with stars. Dark curls spread across her pillow. She looks peaceful. Safe.
She wasn't peaceful five years ago.
Five years ago, she was two years old and screaming, covered in her mother's blood, and wouldn't let me touch her for hours. The attack happened while I was across the city handling business—my wife Katya and newborn son Dmitri alone in our bedroom when Pavel Grom’s men broke through security. And I later learned that Patrick O'Rourke was also involved.
By the time I got home, Katya and Dmitri were dead in pools of blood, and Mila was under the bed, small hands pressed over her ears, eyes wide and empty.
She saw things no child should see. Heard things that still wake her up screaming sometimes.
And I can't erase those memories no matter how many guards I post, how many locks I install, how much distance I put between her and the world.
I failed her once. Let her see her mother die because I wasn't there to protect them.
I won't fail her again.
I watch her sleep for ten minutes—the only weakness I allow myself—memorizing the rise and fall of her small chest, the way her fingers curl around the edge of her blanket. She's seven now. Getting older. But still so fragile.
Still mine to protect.
Finally, I leave before she wakes and sees the blood still crusted under my fingernails.
Back in my office, I pull up the security feeds. The hallway camera outside Valerie's room shows her door closed and lightsoff. She's probably asleep, or lying awake and terrified. Either way, she's contained.
I switch to the recorded footage from earlier—the hallway camera caught her stumbling back to her room after fleeing my bathroom. She could barely walk straight, kept stopping to lean against the wall like her legs wouldn't hold her.
Good.
I fast-forward through the rest of the evening. She doesn't leave her room. Doesn't call anyone on the visible phone. But around 8 PM, the angle catches her pulling something from her bag—a second phone. Cheap flip phone. She stares at it for a long moment, types something quickly, then shoves it back.
Burner phone.
My blood runs cold.
Burner phones mean secrets. Mean contacts she doesn't want traced. Mean she's reporting to someone.
Who?
I make a note to have Mikhail pull her phone records tomorrow. Both phones. And to dig deeper into Marina Petrov's agency. If someone compromised my vetting process, I'll know by morning.
But even as I plan her surveillance, I can't stop thinking about that moment in the bathroom.
The way her eyes went flat and cold. The way she dared me to pull the trigger. The way strength flashed through all that weakness for just one second.
I want to see it again.
Want to push her until the coward disappears and only the viper remains. Want to know what it would take to make that fierceness surface and stay.
What that fierceness would look like, writhing hard with pleasure.
Fuck.