For one second, I expected him to dismiss it. To smile politely and explain that children imagined things.
But he did not.
He looked at Lila, then at Damian, then at the spot on Damian’s side.
“May I examine you?” he asked.
Damian gave a curt nod.
The examination was quiet and tense. Dr. Havel listened with his stethoscope, first to Damian’s heart, then lower, moving inch by inch. He frowned. Then he listened again.
“Anna,” he said, surprising me by using my name, “would you take Lila to the window for a moment?”
Damian’s hand shot out and caught my wrist.
“She stays where I can see her.”
The doctor’s eyes lifted.
Something unspoken passed between the two men.
Finally, Dr. Havel lowered his voice. “There is a faint mechanical pulse. Not constant. Intermittent.”
I felt the blood leave my face.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means,” the doctor said carefully, “that we need imaging equipment this house does not have.”
Damian’s expression darkened. “No hospital.”
“Damian—”
“No hospital,” he repeated. “If Sergei has people watching, I won’t make myself easier to finish.”
Dr. Havel removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Then I will arrange for portable equipment. Quietly. But it will take time.”
“How much time?”
The doctor did not answer quickly enough.
Damian understood.
A shadow crossed his features—not fear this time, but calculation. He was building walls again, brick by brick.
“Viktor,” he called.
The guard stepped inside.
“Lock down the east wing. No staff beyond Anna. No visitors. No deliveries without your eyes on them. Find out where Sergei is.”
Viktor nodded.
Then Damian looked at me.
“And you,” he said. “You will remain at Grayhaven.”
My spine stiffened. “I work here, Mr. Volkov. I don’t live here.”
“You do now.”
The old fear flashed through me. Not because he raised his voice. He did not. But because men like him were used to the world reshaping itself around their decisions.
“No,” I said again.
Dr. Havel glanced at me, startled.
Damian’s eyes narrowed. “You say that word often for someone employed in my house.”
“I say it when my daughter is involved.”
Lila looked between us, sensing the change. Her small hand slipped into mine.
I took courage from that touch.
“She is not a tool,” I said. “She is not part of your security. She is not staying here because you order it.”
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Damian did something I had not expected.
He looked away first.
The silence that followed was different. Not defeated. Not gentle. But changed.
“You’re right,” he said.
I almost wondered if pain had made me mishear.
He took a slow breath, each word costing him. “Your daughter is not a tool. But she may be in danger now. If Sergei learns she noticed something, he will want to know what else she knows.”
“She knows nothing.”
“She knows enough.”
I hated that he was right.
Dr. Havel stepped in softly. “Anna, Grayhaven is not a peaceful house, but at this moment it may be safer than your apartment. At least until we understand what this is.”
My apartment.
A narrow third-floor place above a closed bakery, where the lock stuck when it rained and the radiator clanged all night. I thought of the stairwell light that had been out for two weeks. The alley behind the building. The way Lila sometimes waved at strangers because she believed kindness was the natural language of the world.
Damian watched the decision moving across my face.
“I will not command you,” he said. “But I am asking you to stay.”
Asking.
From him, the word sounded unfamiliar.
I looked down at Lila. She squeezed my fingers and lifted her rabbit toward Damian as if offering comfort.
His face went still again.
The gesture had struck somewhere deep.
“We stay tonight,” I said. “Only tonight. And we need a room away from this hallway.”
“You’ll have one,” Damian said. “Anything else?”
“Yes.” My voice steadied. “No one questions her without me. No one touches her hearing device. No one uses her to test anything.”
“Agreed.”
“And you stop frightening every nurse who tries to help you.”
Dr. Havel coughed into his hand, badly hiding a smile.
Damian stared at me.
For a moment I thought I had gone too far.
Then he said, “I frightened them before I knew they were useless.”
“They may have been useless because you frightened them.”
His mouth twitched.
It was not a smile exactly. More like the memory of one.
Lila tugged my sleeve and signed, Hungry.
The ordinary word broke through the heavy room like sunlight through a crack.
Dr. Havel exhaled. Viktor looked at the floor. Damian stared at her tiny moving hands with a faint bewilderment, as if hunger had become a remarkable miracle simply because a child had announced it beside his deathbed.
“I’ll take her to the kitchen,” I said.
“No,” Damian said.
I stiffened.
He glanced at the door. “Food comes here. Sealed. From the pantry stores. Viktor watches it prepared.”
“That seems extreme.”
“I was poisoned in my own dining room.”
It was hard to argue with that too.
Within twenty minutes, a small table had been brought into Damian’s room. Soup, bread, sliced apples, and milk for Lila. Black coffee for me, though I had not asked for it. Nothing for Damian except a glass of water Dr. Havel personally poured.
Lila sat on the rug near the fireplace, eating apple slices and arranging her rabbit beside her like a dinner guest. The storm softened outside. The room, which had seemed forbidden and cold only an hour ago, began to reveal itself in details.
A stack of books beside the bed.
A chessboard on a side table, mid-game and dusty.
A child’s wooden horse hidden behind a row of medical bottles.
I noticed Damian watching me notice it.
“Misha’s,” he said.
I nodded, unsure what else to do with such a fragile offering.
“He left it everywhere,” Damian continued. “On staircases. Under chairs. Once in my briefcase before a meeting with three very serious men.”
Lila looked up, saw him holding the little horse, and crawled closer. She reached for it, then stopped and looked to him for permission.
The simple courtesy seemed to undo him.
Damian placed the horse in her hand.
She examined it with great seriousness, then set it beside her rabbit. Two companions at the edge of a dangerous man’s bed.
“You said the letter came three weeks ago,” I said carefully. “Do you still have it?”
Damian’s eyes sharpened, returning from memory. “Yes.”
“May I see it?”
Viktor looked at me as though I had asked to wear the crown jewels.
Damian studied me. “Why?”
“I cleaned Mr. Orlov’s study twice when he visited last month. He left papers everywhere. I noticed his handwriting.”
“You read my guests’ papers?”
“No. I picked them up from the floor.” I hesitated. “But my mother used to clean offices. She taught me that people reveal themselves in how they leave a room.”
This time, Damian’s almost-smile was clearer.
“And what do I reveal?”
