Page 52 of Claimed By the Boss
“How long does verification take?”
“Days. A week at most.”
A week. I think about Celine in the penthouse, about Lena in Zurich with a security detail that was built for routine protection and not for a faction that now knows exactly where to find her. I think about the canal walk Lena takes every morning with Priya, the same route, the same time, because nobody told her there was a reason to vary it.
“I want Lena’s detail doubled,” I say. “Today. And I want her route changed without explanation.”
“She’ll ask why.”
“Tell Priya. Not Lena.”
Roman writes it down.
“Celine’s security stays at current levels for now,” I say. “Increasing it further without explanation will frighten her, and I’m not ready to give her the full picture of how close this is.”
“You told her everything two days ago.”
“I told her about Gregor’s leak. I didn’t tell her the faction has had it confirmed and is verifying it for action.” I look at the city through the window, now fully dark, the lights of the building across the street burning in their ordinary patterns.
Roman closes his folder. Stands. “You said that about the succession document too,” he says. “And she found out from an email before you said a word.”
He leaves before I can answer that.
I sit at my desk with the city dark outside the window and Gregor’s empty chair across from me, and I think about a week. Days at most, Roman said. I think about how much can happeninside a week when the people moving against you already know everything that matters.
I pick up the phone. Start making the calls.
The window is closing. I can feel the edges of it narrowing even though I cannot yet see what’s coming through.
21
CELINE
I findhim in his office at noon, the door open, and I sit across from his desk without being asked, which has become a normal thing between us now. The absence of permission required is a marker of how much has changed since the first time I stood in this room with a folder and a fury I didn’t know where to put.
“What do they look like to you?” I say. “When you think about our child.”
He’s quiet for a moment, sitting with the question instead of immediately producing an answer.
“I imagine a girl,” he finally says.
“Me too,” I admit.
He says, “I keep trying to picture her, and I get as far as her hands. Small hands. Then I can’t get further than that.”
I look down at my own hands resting on my lap. “I keep thinking about her voice,” I say. “What she’ll sound like when she laughs. Whether she’ll laugh the way Lena does, all at once, no warning.”
“Lena’s laugh is difficult to prepare for.”
“It really is.”
He almost smiles, the corner of his mouth moving without fully committing, the version of amusement he allows himself in rooms with no audience.
“My mother used to laugh like that,” I say, before I’ve decided to. “Loud, sudden. She’d cover her mouth after, embarrassed about it, but it was already out. Lena got that from her completely. I always thought I took after my father. Quieter. More information about things. He was the kind of person who’d be thinking about something for three days before he said a word about it.”
“That sounds familiar,” Zane says.
I look at him. He’s watching me with the steady attention he gives things that matter to him, and I realize, sitting in his office at noon on a Tuesday, that I have never actually talked about my parents with him. Not once. He knows about the house they left us, about the will. He knows the facts. He doesn’t know my father used to read the newspaper out loud at breakfast, whether anyone was listening or not, or that my mother kept every drawing Lena and I ever made in a shoebox under the bed alongside the important documents.
