Chapter 273: I can distract them

Across the hall, near the window, Sienna saw him go. She had been watching him since the end of the dance, the way you watch a snake you cannot kill. She had seen his phone light up. She had seen his face change. She had seen him step away from her mother and cross the room like a man heading for a fire.

Something happened.

She did not know what. She did not care. All that mattered was that for the first time that night, he was leaving. His eyes were pointed elsewhere. The guards at his back were going with him.

"Viktor."

"I see." Neither of them turned their heads. They spoke through their teeth, still smiling at nothing. "Now," she said.

"Now." They went apart without a glance. Viktor drifted to the west, nodding politely at a boss, stopping to pick up a glass of water he did not want. Sienna turned toward the east, walking slowly, with her hands folded and her chin up.

Nobody stopped her.

The hall behind her was loud. The band played on, and the crowd murmured and drank and watched. A few turned their heads as she passed. Their eyes followed the white dress and the crown on her hair, and then they dropped, respectful, afraid.

At the east door, a guard stood with his hands behind his back.

She did not slow down. He saw her coming. He saw the crown. His shoulders straightened, and he bowed his head low and stepped aside without a word.

Miss Katalia. She did not even look at him.

She was the owner of all of it now. The Don had said so, in front of every boss in the city, in a voice that rang off the walls. The ports, the accounts, the men. Every order in the house came from her mouth, and no other. No guard in that building would dare to stop her. Not tonight. They did not know how.

He made me a queen, she thought. So I will walk like one. She stepped through the door and into the long, quiet corridor.

It was cooler there. The music faded behind her, thin and far away, like a song heard through water. The floor was polished wood, and the walls were hung with white curtains, and the lamps threw soft circles along the ceiling.

She walked without hurrying.

Two maids came around a corner carrying folded linen. They saw her and stopped, and both of them bowed low. A guard by a doorway lowered his eyes. A boy with a tray stepped flat against the wall to let her by.

Nobody asked where she was going. Nobody wondered why the new heir of the Ivanou empire was walking alone through the halls at midnight. She was the owner of all this, and a woman who owns the house can walk where she likes.

It was a very strange kind of power. It was the power she had refused, the power she hated, and it made her skin crawl.

But it worked. She turned a corner, and then another. She went up a short flight of steps and past a window with a view of the dark gardens.

She did not need a map.

She had not meant to memorize the way. She had only walked it once, that afternoon, behind a smiling man in white, with her eyes half on the floor and her mind half on a gun. But her brain did not care what she meant.

It had been built to hold things, whether she asked it to or not. Every hallway, every turn, every door with a brass handle sat in her head like a drawing on paper. Left at the end. Third door on the right. The stairs behind the library. It was how she was made. She had never understood it. She had only learned to trust it.

At the far end of the corridor, a figure stepped out of the shadows. Sienna’s heart jumped. Then the lamplight touched his face, and the white suit, and the familiar line of his jaw.

Viktor.

He had come from the other side, from the west, and he was a little out of breath. He did not run to her. He walked, fast and quiet, and when he reached her he took her hand and squeezed it hard, once, as if to check that she was real.

"Anyone stop you?" he asked, very low.

"No."

"Me neither." They were in the hall outside their bedroom. The door stood just ahead of them, white and closed, with the soft brass handle gleaming.

They did not go in. They stood side by side in the dim light, and the same plan ran through both their minds, as clear as a song.

The lab, the files, then leave.

Outside, in the dark beyond the gardens, Marcus and the Gallon boys would be waiting. Viktor had sent the message an hour ago. They would meet them at the wall by the garden, the weak spot on the left side, and together they would fight their way out of the country if they had to.

But that was outside inside this house, they were on their own. Sienna took a breath.

"Ready?" Viktor said. "No," she said honestly. He almost smiled.

"Neither am I." They turned toward the corridor that led away from the bedroom and began to walk. The corridor to the lab was not like the others.

Sienna stopped at the corner and put one hand flat against the wall. Viktor stopped beside her. Neither of them breathed loudly, and neither moved.

Around the bend, the hallway opened into a wide stone passage with a low ceiling. The lamps here were bright and harsh, with no soft curtains and no flowers. At the far end stood a steel door with a keypad beside it.

That was the way to the lab. She remembered it from the afternoon, and she remembered the cold air that had come out when it opened. Now there were men in front of it.

Sienna counted. Two by the door. Two more at the bend in the middle. Two standing in a loose line along the left wall. Another pair walking slowly up and down, hands near their jackets, boots clicking on the stone.

Seven. Every one of them wore the white suit with the white pin. Every one of them had a gun under his left arm, and she could see the shape of it from here.

She pulled her head back and leaned against the wall. "Too many," she whispered. "There are too many to take out. And they have guns."

Viktor said nothing for a moment. His eyes were half closed, the way they got when he was working something out. "I can distract them," he said.

"How? There are seven of them. You cannot make all of them leave." She swallowed. "If even two stay, they will see us walk through that door. And then it is over."

He did not argue. He knew she was right.

They stood in the dim corner, shoulder to shoulder, and the music from the grand hall came to them thin and far away. Time was running. Somewhere on the other side of the house, the Don was speaking to a captured maid, and when he finished, he would come back.

Think, Sienna told herself. Think. Her head swam, only slightly. She pressed her thumb against her wrist without meaning to. The beat there was fast and wrong. Not now. That was when they heard footsteps.