Page 42 of The Last Dance

Three days into the lockdown, the estate had the hush of a church emptied by scandal. Nothing moved except the ghosts and the help, and Iren, cross-legged on the stone bench in the center of the atrium, where the filtered morning light cut across his lap in stripes so pale they looked photo shopped.

Iren was reading—if it counted as reading when you turned a page every seven minutes and never once blinked at the words. The book was one of the estate’s leather-bound relics, some history of lost civilizations with more gold on the spine than in the actual plot.

He’d picked it at random from a shelf in his wing, declared himself a “gilded prisoner,” and now spent every daylight hour doing the world’s worst impression of a monk on house arrest.

He had already memorized the ceiling, and the guard rotation—every forty-seven minutes, two-man sweep, blind spot at the east corridor junction—and the number of marble tiles between his room and the nearest exit—eighty-three, if you counted the border accent at the threshold.

He had also memorized the precise squeak of the third stair from the bottom, and the schedule for Lin’s perimeter checks, and the time it took the sunbeam to creep from the left foot of his bench to the tip of his knee, which was about ninety minutes, depending on cloud cover.

He was not afraid. He was contained, which was worse.

I let him have his ritual. Sometimes I watched from the upper gallery, out of sight, and sometimes I walked straight into his field of view.

Today, I did the latter: dark suit, shoes silent on the tile, no shadow of escort or guard, just the hum of my own movement through the static of the house.

He didn’t look up from the page until I was directly across from him, sitting on the twin bench. Then he marked his place with one finger, and let the book close on the other hand, and in three seconds read my face as if it was a cheat sheet for the next exam.

His mouth twitched, not a smile. “What happened.”

I liked the way he said it—no question mark. Just a pronouncement, like naming a crime.

I didn’t stall. “Sasha is in London.” I watched him process that. “She’s not coming back.”

He nodded, once. Waited.

“There was a wire transfer from her private account,” I said. “Not to the hairdresser or the florist. To a security firm in Gdansk. Three days before the shooting, she paid for a two-week retainer on a private contractor. Ex-military. The kind of man who doesn’t mind getting his hands wet.”

The atrium went even quieter. Only the faint rumble of a distant mower, somewhere at the edge of the grounds.

“She denied it, of course, but the timeline is tight, and the shell company is one of hers. Lin found the signature.”

Iren looked at the open book for a long moment, then closed it, setting it neatly beside him on the bench. He said nothing for six heartbeats, then, “I’m not surprised.” His jaw went rigid on the words, like he was chewing gravel, but he didn’t look away.

I let the rest of the facts land. “The shooter from the apartment—connected. Not directly, but through the Gdansk firm. They subcontracted to a local hitter for the job. We have the name, but he’s already in the river.”

I watched for a reaction—fear, anger, anything. But all he did was fold his hands on his knee and breathe, steady. If he was breaking, it was a private act.

I went on. “Sasha was not the only party interested in removing you, but she was first. The others may have paid for the follow-up. None have succeeded.”

“Yet,” he said, and it was both a joke and not.

“She will not be a problem again,” I said. “The promise to her father is finished.”

That was as close as I could come to comfort. I’d spent my life enforcing debts, and I knew the currency. Blood bought only so much time, and after that the account closed.

Iren tilted his head. “What happens to her?”

I considered my words. “She has money, and distance, and a new name. She will not return.”

He nodded, as if that’s what he expected. “And if she tries?”

“I will know,” I said. “Before she does.”

For the first time in three days, he smiled. “You say that about everything.”

I returned it, a little. “That’s because it’s true.”

He looked down at his lap, fingers drumming once, then stilled. “Is she alive because of me, or in spite of me?”