Page 24 of Babies for the Boss
I hadn’t thought of doing so, which highlights my lapses in judgment. “Thank you.”
He nods once and leaves without another word about it. This is why I trust him.
The risk is real. I know this. If Fedor is mapping my operation and someone with a connection mentions Vet’s new posting, he will begin asking more questions.
The alternative—leaving Molly unprotected while Fedor finds his footing—is not acceptable. Vet’s cover will hold if no one looks directly at it. The men who know her face are loyal, and loyalty in my organization is not a courtesy. It is a condition of continued employment and breathing.
I have thought this through. Mostly.
But now, what I think about most is Molly. The way she moved through the office last Tuesday in the dark green dress, the one that does something structurally unsound to my concentration. The way she stopped in my doorway at the end of the day with a file in her hand and looked at me for a moment without saying anything, and the air between us had that quality it gets sometimes, taut and aware, before she set the file on the corner of my desk and said goodnight in the pleasant professional voice and left. I sat there for a full minute afterward doing nothing, which is not something I do. I do not sit and do nothing.
Molly apparently makes that possible. She gives me a sense of peace, and it’s the most uncomfortable part of all of this, but I can’t stop craving it either.
She doesn’t know the full shape of what I’m protecting her from, doesn’t know that I’m protecting her at all. I intend to keep it that way, and the weight of that is something I carry now alongside everything else I carry. It doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels, uncomfortably and against all reasonable expectations, like something I want to do.
I watch the city from my window in the early dark and think about Fedor, methodical and patient, and currently mapping the edges of my world. But there’s Vet, somewhere below in the city, doing what she does best.
I will not lose Molly. If I have to, I will take the fight to Fedor and end this once and for all. But the city does not need a war, and that’s exactly what it would become if I let it.
I cannot let it.
9
MOLLY
Vet makes excellent coffee.
This is the first thing I appreciated about her, in those early days before I appreciated anything else. She arrived on a Monday morning with a calm, unhurried efficiency that settled into the office like it had always been there, learned my coffee order without asking twice, and had my inbox sorted by end of day in a way that made me feel mildly ashamed of how I’d been managing it alone.
She is, in short, a godsend.
Vet is quietly competent in the way that people are when competence is simply their natural register, not something they perform for an audience. I liked her immediately, which is not something I say about many people.
It takes about three weeks before I realize she is also extraordinarily well-informed about things that have nothing to do with office management.
It comes out gradually, the way things do when you spend enough time with a person, and the professional veneer wearsto something more comfortable underneath. Three weeks is too short a time for that to happen, but it just flowed so naturally.
We start getting lunch together on Tuesdays. She drinks her coffee black and has opinions about the deli on Forty-Third that align precisely with mine, which established a foundation of trust more efficiently than most things could. She’s easy to talk to. She listens without the small affirmative noises and tilted head that signal someone waiting for their turn to speak. She simply listens, and then she says something precise and useful, and I find myself telling her more than I intended to, which, in retrospect, I should have examined more carefully.
I think she didn’t realize that the information could flow the other way.
It starts small. An offhand reference to a name I recognize from Pavel’s organizational structure, mentioned with a familiarity that doesn’t fit a woman who has only just arrived as an office assistant. A passing comment about overseas logistics that carries the flavor of firsthand knowledge. Nothing overt, nothing that announces itself.
She mentions the rye bread from the deli is too sweet, unlike bread in Russia. Since she told me she’s from Nevada, that seems odd.
Just small things that accumulate at the edges of my attention until one Tuesday over sandwiches, three weeks in, I put them together and look at her directly. “How do you actually know Pavel?”
Vet finishes chewing her sandwich with complete serenity, as though she has been waiting for this question and decided the appropriate response is to finish her bite first. She sets it down,wipes her fingers on a napkin with precise little dabs, and tilts her head at me.
“He did not tell you?” Her accent is faint but present, curling around the edges of certain words like smoke.
“He told me you were an administrative hire.”
“Mm.” She considers this with the expression of someone reviewing a mildly interesting piece of information. “Well. I can administrate. I’m doing it right now, am I not? I reorganized your inbox this morning. Truly, you should look into programs that will do that for you on a constant basis, so you don’t fall behind again?—”
“Vet.”
“Fine, fine.” She waves a hand, bracelets shifting at her wrist. “I worked for him. Overseas.”
