The cabin lights flickered back to life, casting a pale, clinical yellow glow over the rows of first class. The overhead oxygen masks dangled like dead vines, swaying gently with the residual shudder of the aircraft. But nobody was reaching for them.

The master suite on the top floor of the brownstone was vast, decorated in muted grays and deep charcoals, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the misty Charles River.

I laid Lila gently down on the king-sized bed, sliding my cashmere coat off her shoulders. She curled up instantly, pulling a plush down comforter over herself, fast asleep.

Elena stood by the window, watching me with a mixture of awe and lingering dread as I walked out onto the private balcony where Marcus had set up a temporary terminal for me.

The cold night air hit my face, but I barely felt it. My fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard, tapping into my private, encrypted servers.

SEARCH QUERY: ELENA WALSH / LILA MORETTI DATABASE: GLOBAL PUBLIC & PRIVATE RECORDS

The screen flashed red.

Access denied. Records flagged under federal witness protection protocols.

I frowned. Federal witness protection? Elena hadn't been a witness to a federal crime—at least, not one I knew of. Unless...

I bypassed the standard firewalls, routing my query through a series of dark-web proxies I kept reserved for corporate espionage. The screen flickered, dumping raw data onto the monitor in cascading green text.

My breath caught in my throat.

It wasn't the federal government that had flagged her records.

It was Viktor Petrov.

Three years ago, someone inside the U.S. Marshals office—a corrupt field agent on Petrov’s payroll—had run a search for Elena’s social security number. The trail showed that a federal alert had been quietly placed on her file, not to protect her, but to track her movements and feed them back to the Russian syndicate.

They had known where she was living in Chicago eighteen months ago. They had missed her by three days only because she had packed up and moved to Seattle in the middle of the night.

"Luca?"

I looked up. Elena was standing in the doorway of the balcony, her arms wrapped around herself against the draft.

"They found you in Chicago," I said, my voice dangerously calm, though my blood was boiling.

Elena froze, the color draining entirely from her face. "How... how do you know that?"

"One of Viktor’s dirty federal agents flagged your SSN three years ago," I said, stepping off the balcony and walking slowly toward her. "You didn't just run from me, Elena. You were running for your life every single day, weren't you?"

Tears spilled over her eyelashes, hot and silent. She didn't try to deny it. She just nodded, her lower lip trembling.

"Every time I bought groceries with a card, every time I registered her for preschool, every time I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a black sedan too close behind us," she choked out, her voice breaking. "I lived in hell, Luca. For six years, I lived in absolute, paralyzing terror that one day someone would knock on my door, take my little girl away, and use her to get to you."

I stopped inches from her. I could smell the faint scent of rain and lavender in her hair. Slowly, deliberately, I reached out and placed my hand on the back of her neck, pulling her forehead gently against mine.

"They won't," I whispered fiercely. "Viktor is in a maximum-security prison. And his remaining men... the ones tracking your file?"