Chapter 4 - Cracked
Kira felt the rope tighten in her chest. Under his watch. That phrase would have fearful implications for anyone. To her it felt as if a fingernail had been pressed into the map of her plan. But she nodded because there was nothing else to do. She would learn to spin this closer connection into advantage. If she could not have shadow she could have angle. If she could not have distance she could find the fissure where pain would enter the house.
Later that night when the house was quiet and most servants slept, Kira sat on her narrow bed and opened the small compartment at the bottom of her suitcase. Nancy had given her a stack of letters containing names and ledgers and a few photographs she had smuggled out months ago before the new identity. She spread them across her knees and traced a name with the tip of her finger.
A name she had almost forgotten until she saw it in ink. A name that mattered because it connected a gun and a ledger and a route that had sent a lifetime of destruction into her family.
She breathed the name aloud as if saying it could make the world tilt into place. Then with slow motions she folded the papers and tucked them away. Tomorrow she would watch a new table, listen to a new voice and place another small seed in the garden of ruin she had sworn to grow. But tonight she would sleep under a name that was not hers and dream of the day when a man with iced grey eyes would look at her and no longer see Isabel but Kira.
The next morning the house woke to the sound of distant engine roar and the sharp crack of tires. A black car slammed into the gravel drive like a fist. Men in dark coats spilled out with faces hard as stone. They did not ring the bell. They walked straight to the front door with a purpose that smelled of violence.
Lorenzo stood in the hallway as they arrived and his expression changed from reserved to tense with a violence that had been kept in reserve. He glanced at Kira in a way that was more than assessment. He said, Stay inside. Do not open any doors. Lock the west wing door. And he reached for a phone as if he needed to call someone who could not be called.
Kira wanted to protest but an urgency in his voice made the walls of the house shrink. She moved quickly, fingers working with the practiced calm of someone who had rehearsed panic. She latched doors, pulled curtains, and as she closed the last shutter she noticed a familiar figure standing at the base of the marble steps.
It was a man whose face she had seen only once and in a nightmare. He carried a badge that glinted faintly under the porch light. His coat was too polished for the hour. He stared up at the window and then down at the gravel and then across the lawn where shadow held secrets. He did not move on. He waited as if he had been expected.
Kira looked at Lorenzo through the cracked doorway and saw the hard line of a decision form on his face. He said, Do not let anyone in. Under no circumstance let anyone in. If they try to force their way, signal me with the lamp in the study by blinking it twice.
She nodded though her throat felt raw. She felt the house shift. The mansion was no longer simply a place where she learned to fold napkins. It had become a battleground. Her presence here was suddenly more than a plan. It was a peril that might cost lives.
A hand knocked on the front door. Not once. Not twice. A slow measured knock that felt like a countdown.
Kira held her breath and counted through the number of heartbeats she had left before the door moved. She steadied the lamp and lifted her hand to blink it twice as instructed.
She did not press the lamp.
Something tightening in her said that tonight the house would reveal the first of the faces that wanted to tear her down. She braced for the sound of broken wood and angry voices.
The knock came again, harder this time, and a voice that sounded ordinary called out, Officer here with a warrant. Open up and do not make this difficult.
Kira felt the papers in her suitcase as if they vibrated with poison. She knew the sound of a warrant and the way it could be faked. She knew the kind of man who could wear a badge and lie. She moved closer to the window and watched the figure below.
He raised one hand to the light on the porch and folded it back in a gesture that could mean nothing to anyone else but felt like a coordinate in a map only some men read.
Kira looked down at the lamp in her hands and then at Lorenzo on the landing. He had not moved from his position at the foyer. He had his own hands tight on his phone as if he was waiting to hear something that would change the shape of the night.
The house held its breath with her.
Then the front door opened.
The man with the badge smiled as if he had been welcomed home.
Kira tightened her fingers around the lamp and a small sound escaped from her that had nothing to do with revenge and everything to do with survival.
The hinges groaned when the door opened, and the sound cut through the house like a blade. Kira stood rigid, lamp clutched tight in her hands, heart thudding in her throat. The man with the badge stepped inside as if the Windsor mansion belonged to him, his polished shoes striking against
the marble floor in slow, deliberate rhythm.