A Dept Pain In Blood

Chapter Three: Nine Days

The two days after that first morning blurred together in a way Elena wasn't used to. She learned the layout of the house room by room, the same way she used to learn a target before a job, except this time nobody was paying her to leave with anything. She learned which staff members watched her too closely and which ones didn't look at her at all. She learned that Damian ate breakfast standing up, like sitting down was a habit he'd never gotten around to picking up. By the second night, she had stopped counting the cameras in the hallways. There were more of them than she expected for a house that already had a small army guarding the gates.

The call came on the third day. By then, Elena had started to notice small things about Damian she was sure most people never got close enough to see — like the difference between the silence he made when he was thinking, and the silence he made when he had simply stopped listening to someone entirely. It was a small difference. It unsettled her more than she wanted to admit that she could already tell them apart.

He took the call in the study, on speaker, without asking her to leave the room. She understood, without being told, that this was another kind of test.

Damian. The voice on the line was warm and smooth, patient in a way that made the hair on her arms rise before he had even said anything specific. Nikolai Rhys. She recognized him from the photographs in the dossier before the voice even finished its first word. "I hear congratulations are in order.

Word travels.

Word is my business. Same as yours." A pause, slow and a little too dramatic, like Rhys enjoyed being listened to even through a phone line.

I'd love to meet her. The summit seems like the natural place to bring her along. Let everyone see that the great Damian Stone has finally found something he's afraid to lose. Good theater, and theater is exactly what a room full of nervous men needs right now. It'll help everyone feel reassured that you're not about to burn the whole table down out of grief.

She'll be there.

Wonderful. Something shifted in Rhys's voice, small, like a blade turning just a fraction of a degree. "One condition, though, and I'm sure you'll understand it. Before the summit, I want an hour with you. Alone. No guards. No witnesses. No fiancée standing by the door studying my face. Call it due diligence. A man doesn't hand over his trust to someone he's never actually spoken to without an audience watching."

Elena watched Damian's hand where it rested on the desk, still and open, and understood that Rhys wasn't really asking a question. He was testing how fast the fear would show, and he was patient enough to wait through however many phone calls it took to find it.

Damian's face didn't change at all. In three days, Elena had already learned to read the small, almost invisible signs that passed for his tells and even she couldn't find one now.

You know I don't do meetings without witnesses, Nikolai.

I know you didn't used to. Grief changes a man's habits. I'm curious which kind of man you've become. The warmth in Rhys's voice thickened into something almost fond, the voice of a man enjoying a hand he already believed he'd won. Nine days, Damian. Bring the girl. And think hard about my offer. I'd hate for the whole summit to start on the wrong foot, with everyone wondering why the groom won't sit down alone with an old friend.

The line went dead. The silence that followed felt worse than the call itself.

He wants you alone, Elena said. That's not due diligence. That's an opening.

I know what it is. Damian set the phone down more carefully than the moment seemed to need, the kind of careful that comes from a man keeping his hands busy so they don't do something else. Someone in my organization is telling him things only my organization would know my movements, my habits, the fact that grief is the lever he thinks he can pull. I have four people close enough to know all that. I don't know which one yet.

So say no. Don't walk into a room alone with a man who wants your territory and already has someone feeding him your patterns.

If I say no, I confirm every doubt in that room before I've said a single word. A man who won't sit alone with an old associate is a man who's afraid of something. Fear is the only thing Rhys actually trades in. The moment he smells it, the summit stops being a negotiation and turns into an execution. He looked at her, and there was something underneath the flatness of his voice that almost sounded like an apology, though she doubted he'd ever admit to using that word. This is the part of the offer I didn't tell you back in the vault. It isn't just nine days of pretending to be engaged. It's nine days of finding out which one of my own people wants me dead before Rhys gets the chance to find out first and doing it with a fiancée on my arm who has to look like she has no idea any of this is happening."

Elena sat with that for a moment. Nine days had sounded simple back in the vault room, a trade she could make and walk away from once it was done. It didn't feel simple anymore. It felt like she'd agreed to stand next to a man while someone he trusted decided, quietly, in private, that he needed to die and she wouldn't even know which face across the dinner table belonged to the person planning it.

Elena thought about the ledger, still missing four names from a truth she had spent six years chasing. She thought about her father.