"Dr. Asante. I need you to review a patient's medical file. Severe endometriosis with adenomyosis. I need the name of the best excision surgeon in the country and I need a consultation booked within the week."
"Mr. Mostovoi, I'll need the patient's consent before I can..."
"You'll have it. Do the research now. I want options by morning."
I end the call. I sit in the study with the file open on the desk in front of me, and I think about Katriona Bontoft standing by the fireplace in a blue dress, pressing her hand against her side when she thought no one was watching, and telling me she would like to live.
The phrasing stays with me. Not "I want to live." Not "I need help." She said "I would like to live," quiet and almost polite, like a woman who’s asked for what she needs and been told no so many times that she’s stopped demanding her own survival and started treating it like a thing she’s allowed to prefer.
I would like to live.
As though living is something she is requesting permission for.
I close the file and walk downstairs to the reception room. It’s emptier now. Men and women, including my brothers, have moved off to various smaller rooms to negotiate their terms, payments, expectations. The broker sees me and straightens, his tablet ready.
"Mr. Mostovoi. Have you made a selection? I have the Koralev girl available for private conversation. Excellent pedigree, very cooperative..."
"Katriona Bontoft."
He pauses. "Ms. Bontoft. She's... an unusual choice, if I may say, her background is not what we typically..."
"Process the arrangement."
"Sir, her medical situation is quite complex. There may be concerns about viability regarding..."
"If you finish that sentence, Lionel, you and I are going to have a different kind of conversation."
He stops. He makes a note on his tablet.
"The financial terms?" he asks, after a suitable pause.
"Full medical coverage. Immediately. Surgery, specialists, ongoing care, everything she needs, arranged and paid for before the wedding date is set. Everything else standard. Whatever Rovin paid, match it."
"That's... extremely generous for a candidate of her profile."
I look at him, and whatever he sees in my eyes makes the professional mask slip for a moment, revealing the ordinary, frightened man underneath.
"She's mine," I say. "Process it."
I leave the broker and walk back toward the reception room. On the way, I pass the hallway where I first heard her voice, calm and warm and dry, making a terrified woman laugh before the biggest night of her life.
She was being kind because someone near her was scared and she couldn't help herself.
In a room full of greed and ambition and fear, she was the only person who looked at someone else's suffering and reached for it.
I have built empires with my brothers. I have destroyed competitors. I have sat in rooms where the air itself felt dangerous and never once lost control.
And this woman, this underpaid, overworked, medically abandoned woman who gives five dollars a month to a charity she can't afford, has cracked something open in me that I’m not entirely sure I know how to close again.
I find her by the fireplace. She is standing exactly where I left her, her posture perfect, her expression composed, her left hand pressed against her hip in that brief, controlled gesture that tells me the pain has worsened.
"Come with me," I say. "We should talk privately."
She looks at me. Her eyes are the color of an overcast sea, grey and green and steady.
"Okay," she says.
Katriona