WRONG HOUSE, WRONG JOB, RIGHT DISASTER PART TWO

Interlude: "The Arrival"

Dmitri's POV

She didn't belong here. Not in the snow. Not in this house. And certainly not in his world.

The car looked like it had lost a bet with winter. Compact. Mismatched side mirror. One tire balding so badly, it should have disintegrated halfway up the mountain. But it had made it through the gate. Barely. Its engine coughing beneath the weight of cold and misjudged purpose. And then it stopped.

He watched from the upper landing, hand braced on the railing, tension nesting behind his ribs like something coiled and waiting. His body recognized the threat long before his mind caught up.

Not the vehicle. The woman who stepped out of it. Bright coat. Clashing scarf. Boots better suited for a Target clearance rack than snow this deep. She half-tripped exiting the car, caught herself with a ridiculous, stumbling twist, then grinned at no one in particular like she'd stuck the landing. Her gloves didn't match. Her hair was mostly pinned, except where a streak had rebelled at her temple.

And her laugh—loud, unguarded, terribly human. Cracked against the stone façade like it had no idea what kind of place it had just entered.

        

He hated it. That sound didn't belong here. It hadn't been carved from grief or pared down by discipline. It was too bright. Too easy. Either she was dangerously naïve, or she was faking it. And he didn't trust people who smiled that freely in a house like his.

         

Kirill opened the front doors, muttering something to her as she entered. Dmitri stepped down from the landing, silent. Deliberate.

         

She didn't see him at first. Too busy wiping snow from her coat sleeves and mumbling nervously to the security dog, who wisely ignored her. Her boots left melting trails across the imported rug—footprints soaked with slush and road salt. She looked around like she was half-expecting someone to yell "surprise" or arrest her.

         

Good. Fear would serve her better than optimism here. Then she saw him.

         

Her gaze snapped to his and her spine straightened like it had been yanked. Something in her widened—not just her eyes, but all of her. He watched her shift, trying to smile again, the same way someone might hold up a sparkler in the middle of a thunderstorm.

It didn't light the room.

         

It just made her more visible.

         

Her voice wobbled. "I think I'm here for the needed nanny job. You must be Mr. Dmitri Volkov."

         

He didn't answer.

         

Didn't need to. Her pulse was already visible in her throat. She hid it well. But not from him.

         

She babbled. Nervous, rapid fire, trying to stitch a buffer of noise between them. He let her speak until she ran out of breath or courage. Then cut her off.

         

"No."

         

She blinked. "No... what?"

         

He let the pause stretch. "I was not expecting this."

         

Her mouth opened, then closed again. That flicker of something under her skin. Indignation? panic? Flickered and died just as quickly.

         

He should have dismissed her on sight. Sent her back to whatever agency had the audacity to screen candidates with finger paints and blind optimism. But before he could open his mouth to do it—

         

Socks. Tiny ones. Patterned with ghosts. He felt her before he saw her. The faint shift in air pressure. The change in the room's gravity. Elizabeta. She stood in the hallway, back to the wall, half-shadowed, eyes fixed not on him but on the stranger in the coat. His daughter hadn't come this close to anyone new in months. And now she stood watching this woman like she'd seen a ghost she couldn't decide to run from or reach for. Dmitri felt his chest tighten.

         

Amelia turned. Her whole body changed. Less frantic. Softer.

         

She dropped to a crouch, not hesitantly but like it was natural. Fluid. Her voice lowered, tone shifting into something warmer, textured with something gentler than most people dared to use in this house. She didn't push. Didn't coax. She just... stayed there. Letting the silence settle.

         

His baby girl didn't run. That was the first time in months he felt something like his heartbeat hiccup behind the ribs. He clenched his hands.

         

Storm or not, the woman should have been escorted out immediately. The house was locked down. The situation was unstable. Ivanov's people were still sniffing at the perimeter. There was no room for outsiders, no matter how gentle they were with broken children.

         

But then Elizabeta's eyes flicked to the woman's shoes. She hadn't looked away since.

         

He forced himself to turn. To walk. To leave. Discipline over instinct. Always.

         

His boots hit the stairs like punctuation marks. Sharp. Measured. He closed the study door behind him and reached for the decanter—not because he needed it, but because the weight of glass grounded his hands.

         

Vodka kissed the rim of the tumbler. Clean. Bitter. He stared at it, unblinking. It smelled like frost and fire and something too honest. He didn't drink. Not yet.

         

The room was cold. Not from temperature—Anton kept the systems at a consistent sixty-five—but from the hollowness in his chest. He felt it gnawing now. That quiet hum of something watching him from inside his own ribs.

         

He didn't like how she'd looked at him. Not afraid. Not quite. Startled, yes. But not cowed. She'd taken one glance at him and tried to charm her way out of the moment like she was used to slipping through cracks in harder walls than his. And yet she'd melted, just a little, when his precious angel appeared.

         

He had to catalog that. It meant something. Too much.

         

The new probationary nanny was messy. Ill-prepared. Soft in all the ways this place didn't tolerate. She wore color like she hadn't heard the rules, and she smiled like she didn't know it could cost her. But she'd dropped to her knees for a child who hadn't spoken in a year. She'd stayed low. Quiet. Present.