Page 146 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

“Cara,” Patrick says, softening his voice.

I start moving beside him, not with him.

The polished lobby gives way to a side corridor with signs, wrapped light fixtures, and a floor runner that makes our steps sound smaller. Plastic sheeting hangs over one section of wall. I touch my coat once, as if smoothing the fabric, and check the wire. My face stays set.

Patrick keeps his hand near my elbow. I let him. Every step gives Yuri, Kirill, and Dmitri more of the hotel.

“You told me to come alone,” I say as we pass a stack of medical delivery crates.

Patrick’s mouth slants upward. “You didn’t.”

“I did.”

He looks at me with open amusement. “Care Bear, Dmitri Antonov is within shouting distance of every bad idea you’ve had since last night.”

My pulse knocks. Patrick watches my face and enjoys it.

“He can’t rush the lobby,” Patrick says, leading me past a closed admin office. “No, no. That would be foolish for Volkov. Cameras everywhere. A dozen witnesses ready to say his men threatened a woman in a clinic lease building.”

So he knows the trap has teeth on both sides. That tells me something. Patrick didn’t come here panicked. He came here with something to trade.

“You needed a hotel for safety?” I ask, keeping my voice innocent. “That’s what this is?”

Patrick shrugs. “Safety is for people with friends left.”

“Then what do you have?”

“Options,” he says and pushes open a door to a smaller admin hall at the back of the building.

The hall is narrow, with half-installed cabinets along one wall, stacked chairs near a radiator, and plastic sheeting taped over the far doorway. Above the cabinets, a short service gallery runs behind a metal rail and disappears toward the private lift.

A camera blinks above us. I don’t look at it.

Patrick notices. “Relax. If Antonov is listening, he already knows I know.”

The tiny earpiece under my collar stays silent. Dmitri is holding. Relief moves through me first, because he heard the warning and stayed out. Fear follows right behind it, because Patrick is close enough to touch and Dmitri is still outside.

Patrick walks to the wall, stops beneath the service gallery, and turns to face me.

“I tried to keep you alive,” he says, spreading his hands. “You may hate how I did it, but I did.”

Everything in me rejects the sentence. “By putting my name on the Blacklist?” I say.

“By making sure the right man came for you before the wrong men did,” Patrick says, leaning in. “And now look at you. You came to the right person again. Dmitri’s world will swallow Mikhail. You know that, right?”

He takes a cigarette from the packet and offers me one.

I ignore it.

Patrick smiles, then lights one for himself. “Volkov men turn women and children into property, then call the paperwork protection.”

I keep my face plain.

“You were always smarter than the men around you,” Patrick says, pulling a chair from the stack in the corner. He places it near the radiator, checks the heat, and gestures for me to sit.

I stay where I am.

Patrick sits instead. “Smarter than me when you wanted to be. Smarter than Antonov, if you stop letting his hands make decisions for you.”