Page 4 of Fake Marriage Mafia Triplets

That is the part that brought me back to Water Mill tonight. The forged certificate and the theft wouldn’t have pulled me out of hiding on their own. Rahil Shilov did.

The man who consumed every piece of Rusakov territory after my death was declared has been watching the dormant assets for months. He has people monitoring property records, estate filings, and financial trusts connected to my family’s name. If one of his buyers photographed the crest on a piece that should still be locked inside this house, then Shilov now has evidence that somebody accessed the Rusakov estate, and he’ll want to know whether that somebody is connected to me.

If he discovers I’m alive, every person I’ve spent four years protecting becomes a target.

I turn my attention back to Piper Voss. She hasn’t moved from her position against the bed frame, and she holds the folder hard enough to blanch her fingertips.

“You thought I was dead,” I say.

“Everyone thinks you’re dead.” She keeps her chin lifted, but her voice shakes on the last word in a way that tells me the fear is real even if the posture tries to hide it. “I researched the estate for four months. I found the lapsed security contract, copied the service key, and submitted a delayed marriage return through the town’s ordinary records intake, which doesn’t automatically cross-check old ceremony dates against later death declarations. I thought I was robbing a dead man’s estate.”

“You weren’t, though.”

“I was robbing a dead man’s estate as far as I knew.” She’s not trying to excuse herself.

She answers me with more irritation than pleading, pressing the folder against her chest like a shield rather than evidence. I don’t know what drove her into this estate yet, but the texts on her phone may explain it. Fear slips through her control whenever her voice falters, but stubbornness keeps her answering me, and I recognize that stubbornness because I’ve built entire years of my life around the same refusal to let terror make my decisions.

She is also, in the detached way I would register a weapon on a table or an unlocked exit behind a hostile perimeter, distractingly precise. She checked Platon’s position, the doorway, and the windows before either of us spoke, and she immediately pushed backward until the bed protected her from an approach behind her. She evaluates rooms instinctively for advantage, which makes her more dangerous and more interesting than a simple thief.

Her competence should matter only because it increases the threat she poses, and I need to remember that before I forget it again.

“Platon, I need you to secure the ground floor.” I don’t turn away from her. “Check whether she entered alone, then call Vera and tell her I’m handling a property issue. She should keep Angelina at the cottage until I confirm it’s clear.”

“Handling a property issue.” Platon looks at the woman on my floor, then back at me. “That’s what we’re calling her.”

“For tonight.”

“For tonight.” He doesn’t believe me, and he doesn’t bother hiding it, but he reads my tone the same as he has for the last ten years and leaves without glancing back at Piper Voss.

“How much did you sell?” I ask.

She considers the question carefully before answering, which means she’s deciding how much truth will keep her alive. “I completed eleven sales over three months. I sold watches, an icon, a cigarette case, decorative silver, two sets of cufflinks, and a framed photograph I didn’t realize was valuable until the buyer offered four times what I asked.”

“Which photograph did you sell?”

“A woman and two children on a stone terrace. The frame was silver with an engraved date.”

The photograph showed Mama, Angelina, and me. Angelina was three in the photograph, sitting on Mama’s lap with her sandals dangling over the edge of the terrace chair, and I was standing behind them with one hand on Mama’s shoulder. The frame was a gift from my uncle Grigori, engraved with the date of Angelina’s christening years before the photograph was taken. I kept it in the study because I wanted it where I worked, not where I slept. The idea that someone carried it out of this house and sold it to a collector who doesn’t know the names of the people in the photograph, who doesn’t know that Angelina kicked off her sandals three seconds after the picture was taken and ran barefoot across the flagstone, hits me harder than I expected.

“I can get it back,” she says, and her defiance drops half a notch. “The buyer was a collector in Manhattan. I kept records of every sale, including contact information, because I planned to do follow-up authentication if any pieces were questioned. I have the receipts in my bag.”

“You kept receipts.”

“I kept everything. I’m a professional.” She says it without irony, as if forging marriage certificates and looting estates is simply a career that demands good recordkeeping. Under different circumstances, and if she hadn’t sold Mama’s photograph to a stranger in Manhattan, I might respect the discipline. My father’s ledgers documented every transaction, legal or otherwise. Piper Voss operates on the same principle, just from the other side of the transaction.

I should be furious. I should have Platon restrain her while I call Adrian and begin the process of unwinding every forged document she filed. Instead, I’m standing in a room I haven’t entered in four years, and I keep noticing details about this woman that have nothing to do with the damage she caused.

She lifts her chin before every sentence like she’s bracing for a hit that never comes. There’s a small scar near her left ear that her hair almost covers, and I make myself look away from it, then find I’ve looked back.

“Give me your phone,” I say.

“Why do you need my phone?”

“You’re sitting in my bedroom surrounded by evidence that I’m alive, and I need to know who else has that information.”

She stares at me for a long five-count and then reaches into her bag. The perfume trapped in the collar of her sweater smells clean and sharp against the stale air of this house. She holds the phone toward me by its edges, and I take it without touching her.

The lock screen shows three notifications before I hand it back for her to enter the passcode.