Aria’s POV
Romanov was at the console before Dmitri finished speaking, pulling up the satellite feed himself, his jaw set in a line I’d learned to recognize as the calm before something far worse than anger.
“Show me,” he said.
The screen resolved into grainy gray shapes—vehicles, four of them, parked along a service road half a mile from the estate’s northern boundary.
Engines still running, judging by the faint heat signatures.
“That’s not a scouting party,” Dmitri said. “That’s a staging position.”
“They lied about the timeline,” I said, my stomach twisting. “Or they never intended to keep it in the first place.”
“Both,” Romanov said. “The message was never a warning. It was misdirection. They wanted us spending tonight preparing for tomorrow while they moved everything into pla
