Page 4 of Bratva Baby

“That’s because easy in this family usually means dangerous.”

A movement near the side hall pulls my eye. Two security men change position. Not ballroom staff. House men. One murmurs into an earpiece. On the far side of the room, Maks leaves the bar and disappears through the same door Grigor’s senior man used earlier.

Something in freight has clearly broken open, and nobody’s going to tell me in this room.

“Forgive me,” I tell Mikhail, already stepping back. “If I don’t rescue my aunt from that woman in silver, I’ll be hearing about it until Christmas.”

He looks over, spots nobody in silver who could possibly be with my aunt, and almost smiles. “You’re lying.”

“Of course. That doesn’t make me wrong to leave.”

He dips his head, accepting defeat for the evening. “I’ll try again.”

“That’s your worst quality.”

“It’s in my top five.”

I leave him with that and cross the ballroom at an unhurried pace. No rushing. No sharp turns. No look over the shoulder. If you live in a family like mine, you learn young that panic is most useful to the person causing it.

I pass my aunt near the floral arrangements and kiss the air by her cheek. She smells like white roses and old money. “You look beautiful,” she says automatically, then adds without changing her smile, “Your uncle wants everyone staying another hour.”

“Why?”

Her eyes remain on the room. “Because he said so.”

That’s answer enough.

I drift toward the hall, pausing once to take a canapé from a tray so anyone watching sees nothing but a bored niece getting fresh air from her own family’s event. A pair of junior political wives block the corridor for a second, speaking in low, urgent voices about school admissions. I slide past them, heels quiet on the marble, and keep going until the music fades behind me.

One of the guards near the study straightens when he sees me. He’s been with the family for years, long enough to remember me in braces and school uniforms. “Miss Leonidova.”

“Has my uncle gone into the office wing?”

His face gives me nothing. “Not this way.”

“Then Maks did.”

He says nothing.

I give him a pleasant little smile that means I know he won’t answer and we both know why. “Thank you. You’ve been no help at all.”

He almost smiles back, which is as far as men like him go.

I take the back stairs instead of the main corridor. My father taught me the house that way. Never use the obvious route when you’re trying to know something before someone wants you to.

The stairs bring me down behind the library and past the old administrative hall, where the public beauty of the Leonidov residence gives way to the actual skeleton.

Offices. Storage. Locked archive rooms.

Private terminals. Secure filing.

My badge still gets me through the import wing.

The office is dark when I enter. For one second, I just stand there with my hand on the door and take it in.

This used to be my father’s domain, though not the room, exactly. His real work lived in people and systems and habits.

Still, his shadow stays here more than anywhere else in the house.