97

Asher

“Tell me everything,” I say.

I’m standing in one of the large bedrooms in the cabin. There are four, but this is the biggest. It’s the only space that can comfortably fit me, Mila, and six of my brigadiers. Kostya has placed himself dead center in the room, his shoulders pulled back, head high and static. The rest sit behind him in an arrangement of chairs I’ve had brought in from other rooms.

Mila is the only other one on her feet; she’s picked the back right corner, huddling into the gap like she wants to be ignored. She keeps her arms tucked around her chest, her lips scrunched up.

Kostya clears his throat. “Three days after you left, the police raided the mansion. They searched it up and down, turned it inside out, but of course, they found nothing.”

“I assume they interrogated the staff?” I ask.

“Nobody said a word, of course.”

Not surprising; my people are loyal down to their bone marrow. “Good. What else?”

Kostya glances over at Nikolai. The lanky man jumps to his feet to