Page 32 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

I’m alone in a suite nicer than any hotel I have visited, surrounded by woods, guards, history, and men who lower their voices when a woman named Elena is mentioned. I eat three bites of the roll and two spoonfuls of soup because Mrs. Wentworth is stout and proud and probably impossible to disobey.

After that, I inspect every surface. Windows sealed. Vents narrow. Bathroom mirror mounted flush. Desk drawers empty. No loose hardware except the lamp, and the lamp is useless unless I plan to start my rebellion by redecorating someone’s skull.

Voices move outside. Russian first, then a few words in English. I lean closer, pressing my fingertips to the wood.

“The Irish-listed key,” one man says, then spits.

“Shut up,” another says.

“What? Antonov is taking personal interest.”

“Personal makes men stupid.”

“Maybe her brother guessed that.”

A pause.

“That he would come?”

“Yes. Now shut up. Someone’s coming.”

My hand stays on the door. The suite, the guards, the call, the rules, the soup, all of it pulls into one clean and awful line. Patrick didn’t pick my name because I was available. He picked it because Dmitri would come.

7

DMITRI

Ileave Cara’s suite with her last words working under my skin.

Taking care of me?

She said it as if household care came with chains sewn into the hem. Expensive and involuntary. A neat little phrase, tossed at Mrs. Wentworth, yet it follows me into the corridor.

The lock engages behind me. The sound is supposed to put the matter where it belongs—behind a door, under guard, contained until morning. My mind circles back, and not to Patrick O’Connell. I’ve handled harder problems with less information, and I’ve broken men with better plans than his.

Cara is different. She turns a phrase into a weapon before most people find the handle. She makes fear sound like sarcasm, and somehow, that makes it harder to dismiss. She doesn’t understand this house yet, the Blacklist, Morozov, or the way Patrick placed her name where the wrong men could see it. Still, one thing is already clear to her.

A woman can be trapped with clean sheets, soup, and polite staff as surely as she can be trapped with chains. If Cara sees that after one hour in Maksim’s estate, then Patrick has made a worse mistake than stealing money. He has handed us someone who can read the cage while she’s still inside it.

That’s a problem. Mrs. Wentworth may keep her fed, warm, and watched. Managing her will be another matter.

The north wing corridor holds two guards, one staff runner, and a maid carrying folded linens against her chest. All three see my face and find urgent reasons to look elsewhere. Good. The house works when people know when to speak and when to keep moving.

Maksim’s estate isn’t sleeping. It never really sleeps, but tonight, every layer has opened one eye. Cara’s arrival has moved through staff passages, guard posts, the legal wing, and the control office faster than any official notice.

A listed woman has entered the house again, and everyone old enough to remember Elena’s first months here knows that phrase can cost a man teeth when he uses it carelessly.

I pass the frosted glass of the security office. Abramov’s men work behind it, faces lit by monitors, hands moving over keyboards, feeds shifting from gates to corridors to service roads. The eastern camera grid cycles without delay. Two guards change post near the garage access, and the timing matches the rotation sheet I signed an hour ago.

Cara would notice that. The thought irritates me because it feels close to admiration.

Near the legal wing, two men are speaking when I approach. One has a mouth he hasn’t learned to control.

“Another listed woman,” he says, then sees me and swallows the rest.

His partner goes pale. “He means the O’Connell file.”

He knows his partner can have his face caved in for a slip like this. I let him keep breathing.