Chapter 282: Is something wrong?

Kalisto sat at the long table in the grand hall with his cane across his knees. The candles had burned low. The music was still playing, but it had a thin, tired sound now, and half the guests had stopped dancing and were only standing, talking in small knots. He was in his usual place with a glass of wine at his elbow. He had not touched it.

He turned his wrist and looked at the dial for the third time. An hour. His son had been gone for an hour.

Kalisto was a man who could read a room the way other men read a page. He could feel a change in the air before the people in it felt it themselves. And something had changed. It was cold, like a draft under a door. Every instinct he owned told him so.

He drummed his fingers once on the cane. Viktor is not an easy man to put down.

He knew it. The man was fast and clever, and he did not scare. But Shemmel had a gun, and Viktor had been stripped of his. A man with his bare hands against a man with a silenced pistol was not a fair fight. Shemmel would have done it quietly, in some back corridor, with a single clean shot. Then he would have taken the girl by the arm and brought her somewhere safe.

He is probably with her right now. The thought made him smile.

He let himself enjoy it, just for a moment. It was about time. Twenty years was a long time to wait, and now the pieces were falling into place one by one, like stones in an old, well-built wall.

Sienna has everything now. He turned the idea over slowly, savoring it.

Konstantin had said it himself, in front of every boss and every banker in the city. Total, sole ownership. A hundred witnesses had heard it. A hundred of the most powerful people in the country had clapped their hands and drunk to it. The papers would only be ink and paper. The words were already stone.

There was no court on earth that could undo what had been said in this hall tonight. There was no lawyer who could argue with that many witnesses. The people in this room could make it legal or illegal by a nod.

So whoever held the girl held it all.

And once Konstantin was gone, and Sienna was gone from his shadow, and she will woke to find herself wearing a purple ring, then there would be nothing left to stop him.

Kalisto’s smile deepened. Then something at the far end of the hall caught his eye.

Two men in white suits had come in through a side door. They did not walk like guests. They walked fast and close to the wall, with their hands inside their jackets, and they were looking at the head table. At Helena. His smile faded.

That is not good.

She sat where she had been all evening, straight-backed and calm, with her untouched glass in her hand. The Don’s chair beside her was empty. She had glanced twice at the doors, and he had seen it. He had been watching her the whole time.

Helena.

He had not meant to let her out of his sight. She was not only a woman, not only the Don’s wife and the mother of the girl. She was the answer to the fund, the one with the blood and the memory and the finger that could open it. The money in that fund was enough to buy a nation. It was more than all the ports and warehouses in the Ivanou name put together.

Once the Don was dead tonight, and Helena was in the right pair of hands, everything would be his. The girl. The project. The power she had just been given. And Helena, with the money to go with her.

He knows.

The thought came sudden and clear. Konstantin had figured something out. He could feel it the way he could feel weather in an old knee. The man had walked out of the hall in the middle of a toast and sent his own men back to take his wife. He would not do that for a headache. Something had gone wrong, and Konstantin had put his hand on it.

I cannot wait for Shemmel.

He lifted his hand to his glass, as if to drink, and did not. His fingers were cold.

The two men reached the head table. "Please, ma’am," said the taller one.

He bent over Helena’s chair, and his voice was polite and low. He did not touch her. He only put one arm out, as if to help her stand.

"You need to come with us." Helena looked up at him. For one second, her face was blank. Then she smiled, a little puzzled, the way a woman smiles at a servant who has interrupted her conversation.

"Excuse me? I am waiting for my husband."

"Please, ma’am."

"Is something wrong? Has something..."

"This way." They did not give her time. The shorter man had already taken her hand. He drew her up from her chair, not roughly, but with a firmness that left no room for a no. The taller one moved to her other side. Her glass fell from her fingers and rolled across the white cloth, leaving a dark trail of wine.

"What is happening?" she said. She had to say it. She had to play the part of a frightened wife, and she did it well. But her eyes had already gone to the doors, and Kalisto saw the quick, cold light in them. She knew exactly what was happening.

They led her away between the tables. The guests turned their heads. A few whispered. No one moved. A woman in red put her hand to her throat. The music played on.

Kalisto watched her go.

He watched until the side door closed behind her. He sat there, very still, with his hand on his cane. Then he reached down beside his chair, slow and unhurried, as if he were adjusting a shoe.

When he straightened, there was a tablet in his hand. It was thin and black. He rested it on his knee and woke the screen with one finger. A string of numbers ran across it. He typed a few keys, without looking. Access granted.

A map of the mansion opened in front of him. Every wall, every hallway. Every camera in the house, in tiny glowing squares. Every door, a small line of green.

He had paid for this a long time ago. He had paid in money and in patience. Each year, he added one more piece. A code here. A key there. Today he had every piece, and all of them fit.

All the doors in this house are electronic, he thought. Everyone. He tapped the screen. One by one, the little green lines turned red.

The kitchen door. The garden door. The east terrace, the west terrace, the cellar, the roof. The long front doors, with their golden handles and their carved white pillars. Every exit in the Ivanou mansion, every window, every gate, locked with a single, silent touch.

No one would get in or out unless he allowed it. At the end of the grand hall, above the tall main entrance, a small light began to blink. It was red.

It pulsed slowly, again and again, like a heartbeat. A few guests noticed. Most did not. The party hummed beneath it, bright and loud, and the music rose to a cheerful end.

Kalisto lifted his glass at last and took a long, slow sip of wine.