2026-11-02 21:58:37
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The summons
The knock came after midnight. I was still in my suit, sitting on the floor with my back against the bed, staring at the wall and trying to remember the sound of Mara crying so I could feel something about it. It was one of Viktor's guards at the door, a heavy man with a flat voice, and he said my father was asking for me. Alone. I followed him down the dark hallway. The house was quiet in a way I had learned to distrust, every door shut and every light low, as if the walls themselves were listening. At the tall double doors he stopped, opened them, and stepped aside without meeting my eyes. The room had changed since the first night. There were more machines now, and a nurse in the corner who rose when I came in and left without being told. Viktor lay propped against his pillows, smaller than before, the silk hanging off his shoulders. The lamp beside him threw his shadow huge across the wall, and it was the only part of him that still looked like a man who ran a city. "Close the d
The choice
They moved Marcus's body before sunrise, and by morning the carpet had been scrubbed so thoroughly you would never have guessed anyone died there. That frightened me almost as much as the death itself. In this house a man could be wiped out of a room in a few hours, and everyone would go on eating breakfast.I didn't sleep. I sat on the edge of the bed in the white room with my hands between my knees, looking at the sink where I had scrubbed them twice. Marcus had said my mother sounded like a woman worth knowing. He was the first person in this house to say her name with any kindness, and he had died with my wine in his throat.Ines came in at dawn without knocking. She looked older than she had the day before, her coat creased and her eyes ringed with gray. She shut the door and leaned against it."Dario talked," she said. "Not willingly, and not for long. He wasn't working for himself. He's been on a rival's payroll for three years, one of the families that has wanted this empire s
Blood
Dessert arrived with a toast. Servants moved down the table with silver trays and set a fresh glass of dark red wine at every place, and the room settled into the careful quiet I had come to recognize. Mine was placed in front of me by a young man with a stiff neck and sweating hands. He didn't nod the way the others had. He set the glass down and stepped back too quickly, and I noticed only because I was noticing everything that night.Marcus, the old accountant who had taken the empty seat beside me halfway through dinner, leaned over with a wheezing laugh. He was the only person at that table who had spoken to me like a person. He had asked about my mother, and when I told him how she hummed over the dishes, he smiled into his napkin and said she sounded like a woman worth knowing. For ten minutes I had forgotten where I was."You haven't touched your glass," he said. They'll notice, boy. In this house a full glass is an insult.I don't drink much."Then wet your lips and look grat
The smile
Ines gave me a room on the second floor, a clean white box with a bed and a bathroom, and she stood in the doorway while I stared at the hot water running over my hands. I hadn't realized how filthy I was until the water turned gray. When I came out, there was a black suit laid across the bed with the tags still on, and a pair of shoes that fit me better than anything I had ever owned. I did not ask how she knew my size. In this house, I was starting to understand, people knew things."Dinner is at eight," she said. "The whole family attends when Viktor is unwell. It is how they remind each other who is still standing."Do I have to go?"If you hide in this room, they will decide you are afraid. Afraid people don't last here." She straightened my collar with a quick, practiced tug, the way my mother used to before church. Watch everything. Eat only what others eat first. Smile as little as you can manage.I thought she was exaggerating until I walked into the dining hall.It was a lon
Crossing over
Ines made me ride in the trunk. She apologized twice before she closed it, and then there was only darkness, the smell of rubber and old oil, and the hum of the road coming up through my spine. I held the duffel against my chest and counted turns until I lost count. Twenty minutes became thirty. The car slowed, stopped, and I heard her window slide down and a man's voice say her name with the easy familiarity of someone who had said it a thousand times."Delivery for the kitchen," she said. "Mr. Kessler's medicine."At this hour?Do you want to be the one who tells him it's late?A pause stretched long enough for my heart to climb into my throat. Then the engine rolled forward over gravel, and I let out a breath I had been holding without knowing it. I was inside. Somewhere above me, heavy iron gates were closing, and every instinct I owned told me they would never open for me again.When the trunk finally lifted, Ines was standing in a narrow service yard behind a house so large I co
Ines
She told me to stay inside the unit with the door down and speak to no one, and she arrived forty minutes later. I know it was forty because I watched the phone's clock the whole time, sitting on the duffel bag with the gun wrapped in cloth beside me, flinching at every footstep in the corridor. When the knock finally came, three quick raps and then two slow ones, I almost didn't answer. A name on an index card was only a name, and I had learned the hard way what people could do with one.I rolled the door up a foot and looked out. A thin woman in a gray coat stood there, somewhere in her fifties, with silver streaks in her black hair and a face that had gone tired in a way sleep couldn't fix. Her eyes were red. She studied me like she was reading something written across my forehead, and her hand came up to cover her mouth."You have his jaw," she said. And Nora's eyes.I stepped back so fast I hit the shelf. The men in the parking lot had said almost the same words, and my body reac
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