The Don’s Silent witness

Chapter 4

A Name on a File

She told herself she only wanted a closer look, nothing more. She waited until the hallway was empty, then crossed to the study door and pushed it open a little wider.

The room was empty. A desk sat near the window, papers spread across it, along with a folder someone had left open. She should have turned around right then. Instead her feet carried her forward, the same way they always did in the library when a shelf looked crooked and she couldn't walk past it without fixing it.

She recognized the photograph clipped to the top page immediately.

It was the man from the library. The one whose blood had still been wet on the tile when she found him. Someone had written a name beneath his photo. Yuri Sokolov. Below that, a list of dates, numbers that looked like shipment logs, and a line near the bottom that made her stomach drop.

Worked for N. Petrov. Confirmed leak. Confirmed traitor. Sanctioned.

She had walked into the middle of a war she knew nothing about, and now she was holding proof of it in her own two hands.

"Curious?"

She spun around so fast she nearly knocked the folder off the desk. Damian stood in the doorway, arms crossed, watching her with an expression she couldn't read at all.

"I was looking for the bathroom," she said, the lie falling apart the second it left her mouth.

"The bathroom is the other direction. You passed it twice."

She had no answer for that.

Damian walked into the room, picked up the folder, and closed it without any visible anger, which somehow frightened her more than shouting would have.

"You're going to hear things in this house," he said. "Names. Numbers. Things that aren't your business to remember. I'd suggest you get very good at forgetting them quickly."

"Who was he? The man I found?"

Damian's expression hardened, just slightly. "Someone who thought he could sell information to my enemies and still sit at my table like nothing had changed. He made his choice. I made mine."

"And what choice did I make?" Elena's voice came out quieter than she meant it to. "I didn't choose any of this. I didn't choose you, or this house, or a wedding in four days."

For a moment something crossed his face that looked almost like guilt. It was gone before she could be sure she'd seen it at all.

"No," he agreed. "You didn't."

He set the folder down and looked at her for a long moment, long enough that she felt the weight of it settle somewhere in her chest.

"Go back to your room, Elena. The wedding is in two days, and you'll need to look like you're happy about it in front of people who will be watching for the smallest crack."

She left the study without another word, but she carried the name with her the whole way back down the hall.

Sokolov. Petrov. Sanctioned.

She didn't understand the whole picture yet, but she understood enough to know that whatever war Damian was fighting, she was standing right in the middle of it now, whether she wanted to be there or not.

Lena arrived the next morning with a garment bag over one arm and an assistant trailing behind her carrying boxes, and within twenty minutes Elena's room had been turned into something that resembled a bridal shop.

"You're going to want to breathe through this part," Lena said, unzipping the bag to reveal a dress that probably cost more than Elena made in an entire year at the library. "It's a lot to take in all at once."

"I still don't understand why any of this needs to look real," Elena said, standing still while the assistant adjusted fabric around her shoulders. "It's not like anyone's actually checking whether we love each other."

"You'd be surprised." Lena's tone stayed light, but her eyes were serious. "People in our world notice everything. If this looks fake, it invites questions, and questions get people killed faster than almost anything else. My brother doesn't do things halfway, and neither should you, if you actually want to stay safe."

Elena looked at her reflection in the mirror. A version of herself she barely recognized, dressed for a wedding she'd never agreed to, standing in a house that belonged to a man who had held a gun to her head less than a week ago.

"Does it get easier?" she asked quietly. "Being part of all this?"

Something softened in Lena's expression, just for a moment. "Some days," she said. "Other days you just get better at hiding how hard it still is."

The door opened before Elena could respond. Marcus stepped inside, his face tighter than she'd seen it before, ignoring the dress entirely.

"We have a problem," he said.

Lena straightened immediately. "What kind of problem?"

"Petrov knows Yuri's dead," Marcus said. "And he's put together who was in that library the same night." His eyes flicked briefly toward Elena before landing back on Lena. "He knows there was a witness."

The room went completely still. Even the assistant stopped moving, pins held frozen halfway between her hand and the hem of the dress.

"Does he know who she is?" Lena asked.

Marcus's silence answered the question before he ever opened his mouth again.