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Elara’s face comes to me without permission. Her eyes when she argues. Her hand in Anya’s hair while they read together. Her mouth swollen from mine in my study.

I push the thought away. “Do you think she is lying?”

“I think she is hiding things.”

“That’s not the same answer.”

“No,” he says. “It is not.”

I wait.

He opens another file. “I know we went through everything and cleared her, but there’s just about her past employment history that’s bothering me. She doesn’t look like a girl who just drops her job after three months, especially when her finances aren’t good. And she’s done this multiple times; there are at least two jobs where she never went back, and she didn’t submit her papers. That’s why, despite having such a high degree, she has to resort to making deliveries.”

What he tells me just angers me even more.

“What I mean is that,” Sergei continues after taking a look at my face, “she’s hiding something.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of it when it comes to that,” I say coolly. “Right now, focus on Kirill and the other leads we have.”

“Right, sir,” Sergei says.

After he leaves, I remain at the desk.

The files are still open in front of me, but I am not reading them. Kirill’s blurred hand. Irina’s questions. The delivery request. Elara’s name sitting in the middle of reports where it doesn’t belong.

I don’t want to doubt her.

That’s the problem.

If Sergei is right, and someone wanted Elara close to us, they chose well.

I hate that. I hate it enough that when I leave the study later and find her outside the smaller library, holding a folder against her chest with a pencil tucked clumsily into her hair, I am already in the wrong mood.

She stops when she sees me. “Nikolai.”

“Elara.”

The air between us is different now.

She feels it too. I can tell from the way her fingers tighten on the folder.

“Do you have a minute?” she asks.

“For what?”

“Anya wanted me to talk to you about Lily’s birthday party.”

“No.”

Her eyebrows lift. “You don’t even know what I was going to suggest.”

“I know enough.”

Her mouth tightens, but she keeps her voice calm. “I understand why you’re worried. I’m not asking you to send her alone or pretend nothing happened. I just thought there might be a safer way. Extra guards, private car, you speaking to Lily’s parents first⁠—”

“She is not going.”

“Nikolai, she misses her friends.”