Chapter 272: Enjoy the party

Carina had not looked up all night.

She stood near a pillar at the edge of the hall with her eyes on the floor and her hands folded in front of her. To the guests, she looked like a quiet girl in a silver-white dress, someone to nod at and forget. That was exactly how she liked it.

But she wasn’t watching the floor.

She was watching feet. She had been trained to, years ago, in a back room with a man who smelled of tobacco and hit her when she looked at faces. Faces lie, he had said. Hands lie. Feet do not. A person could smile and laugh and hold a glass steady, but their feet always showed where they wanted to go.

She had counted every pair that left the hall. She had counted every pair that came back.

And now she saw one more.

A pair of plain black shoes, worn thin at the heel, crossing the marble in a straight, quick line. They did not wander like a servant’s shoes did. They did not stop to let a guest pass. They went from the service door to the long table without a single wasted step.

A maid.

Carina lifted her eyes just a little, enough to see the gray dress and the silver tray. The woman’s face was pale and plain. Her hair was pinned flat, and she held her chin low. She moved to Kalisto’s chair and bent beside him as if she had always been there.

"More wine, sir?"

"Thank you, my dear."

She set a fresh glass on the table in front of him with a small, neat movement. Her fingers slid under the base of the glass and pulled away.

It took less than a second.

A guest would have missed it. A guard would have missed it. Even Kalisto barely moved, only touched the stem of the glass and drew it toward him, slow and easy, as if he were thirsty.

But under the base, for one blink, Carina saw a corner of white. A small folded square of paper.

There.

She did not run. She did not call out. She waited until the maid had turned away, tray held flat against her chest, and begun the long walk back toward the service door. Then Carina stepped from behind the pillar and followed.

She kept three paces behind her. She moved quietly and kept her face blank. When the maid slipped through the narrow door into the servants’ passage, Carina caught the edge of it before it closed and slid in after her.

The passage was dim and cold and smelled of soap. Pots clattered somewhere far away. The maid had stopped at the corner and was setting her tray on a shelf, and her shoulders were loosening, one small breath at a time.

She thinks she is safe. Carina’s hand shot out and closed around her wrist.

The maid gasped. She spun, and her tray went crashing to the stone floor, and before she could scream, Carina pushed her back against the wall and put a hand flat over her mouth.

"Don’t," Carina said softly.

The woman’s eyes were wide and wild. She struggled. She was stronger than she looked, but Carina was trained, and she pinned the woman’s arm behind her with one smooth movement.

"So you are the mole," Carina whispered. The maid shook her head wildly. A muffled sound came out against Carina’s palm.

"I saw it. The note under the glass." Carina’s voice was very low and very even. "I have been watching you carry that for who knows how long. You thought no one would see."

The woman went still. Her eyes filled. She did not say yes. She did not say no. She only stared, and her whole face begged, and Carina could not tell if it was fear of being caught or fear of something else.

She is not afraid of me, Carina thought suddenly. She is afraid of someone else. She pushed the thought down. There was no time. With her free hand, she pulled out her phone.

The text was short. Caught a maid passing Kalisto a note. Servant passage, east side. Her thumb hovered for half a second. Then she sent it.

In the grand hall, the Don’s phone buzzed against his hip.

He was in the middle of a sentence, laughing, with a glass in one hand and Helena’s fingers tucked in the crook of his arm. A boss in a gold ring was telling him a story about a boat. The Don had been nodding along, warm and easy, a man with nothing in the world to worry about.

He glanced down at the screen. He read it once.

The laughter did not leave his face. But it stopped living there. It stayed on his mouth like paint on a wall, and behind it his eyes went flat and quiet and very, very cold.

A mole. Passing notes to Kalisto.

He had suspected. He had known, somewhere under his skin, that the walls of his house had a hole in them. But to see it written plainly, in a text from a girl he had raised, made something in his chest drop like a stone into a well.

If she works for Kalisto, then she knows. Every plan and move he had made in the past years. Every careful word about the project, whispered behind the lab door or in the dark hours when he thought nobody listened. If this woman had been carrying it all across the room, folded small under a wine glass, then Kalisto had known it before the Don had even sat down to dinner.

What does he know? What did he hear? He set his glass on a passing tray. His hand did not shake.

"Forgive me," he said to the boss in the gold ring, with a gentle smile. "I must see to a small matter." He let go of Helena’s arm. She turned her head. "Konstantin?"

"Stay," he said. He patted her hand. "Enjoy the party. I will be back soon."

And he was gone, walking through the crowd with long, steady steps, his white jacket slicing the candlelight. Two guards peeled away from the wall and fell in behind him without a word.

Helena stood alone with her glass.

She watched his back until it vanished through the east door. Her smile did not move. But in her chest, her heart was falling, slowly, from a great height. Who is it? Please, she thought. Please, not her.