WHAT HE ERASED

The box wasn't heavy.That was the part I kept coming back to. Not the humiliation of it. Not Viktor's message, delivered by his assistant at seven in the morning like I was a contractor whose contract had quietly lapsed.Not the fact that I'd woken up in this house for ten years and would not sleep in it again after today. What I couldn't move past was the weight of the box. Or the lack of it. Ten years. One cardboard box. The kind you pick up at a grocery store because nobody had thought to send up something sturdier.A few sketchbooks. A USB drive with five years of archived work. The small framed photograph of my mother I'd kept on the studio windowsill because no one had ever told me I couldn't.And the gold pen the one Viktor had pressed into my hand after my first completed collection, a Thursday evening, the workroom still smelling of fabric dye and warm approval. I'd kept it in my desk drawer for years. Couldn't throw it away.Couldn't use it on anything that mattered either

Natalia Volkov picked a bar I'd never heard of.She'd picked somewhere I'd never been. No windows to the street, lighting so dim you had to squint. Deliberate. She was already in the back corner when I got there, coat on, untouched water in front of her.She looked different. Tired in a way that had settled into her face and stopped being temporary. The last time I'd seen her she'd been composed in the way she always was nothing given away, nothing invited.Tonight the composure was still there but it was working harder than usual. I noticed that before I even sat down."Sit," she said.I did.Her eyes dropped to my stomach for half a second. My whole body locked up. I told myself I was reading into it.I wasn't showing. Seven weeks. There was nothing to see."You look well," she said."You called me down here to tell me that?"The corner of her mouth moved. Not quite a smile. "You were always direct. I used to tell Viktor that was your best quality." She paused. "He said it was your

Rafael Conti died in a boating accident off the Amalfi Coast seven years ago.Survived by his sister, Elara. Private funeral. No body recovered.I read the article four times. Then I found the obituary in an Italian paper and ran it through a translator and read that too. Same story. Same details. Same photograph younger, but the same jaw, the same set of the shoulders as the man in Aleksei's photo.No body recovered.I put the laptop on the bed and pressed both hands over my face.Someone was walking around using a dead man's name. Running the legal arm of one of Europe's largest fashion conglomerates. Structuring the merger that had just tied Viktor's company to the Conti Group for the next twenty years.And Elara knew.R.C. not who he says he is. Elara knows.Viktor was either part of it or he was walking straight into it. Neither option was good.I didn't sleep. Sky outside went grey and I was still on the floor.I found a charger in the kitchen. Stood in the dark. Forty-eight h

I took the photograph. Turned it over. Blank on the back. Different from the one in the envelope, which meant Aleksei had more than one. Which meant he'd been watching this man for a while."Where did you find this," I said."Study. Behind a panel in the desk." Viktor leaned against the doorframe. "My father built the desk himself. Hollow compartment in the back left corner. I found it when I was twelve. He never knew." A pause. "There were six photographs in there. All the same man. Different locations.""Six.""Milan. Geneva. Once here, outside our building." His jaw tightened. "Someone my father was tracking. For years, from what I can tell."I handed the photograph back. Kept my face still."You don't know who he is," I said."No. Do you.""Why would I."He watched me for a second not the impatient kind of watching, the kind where he was actually thinking. Viktor had always done that. Asked questions without asking them."Because you knew my father," he said. "Better than you thi

I stared at the photograph. The lawyer was watching me. "Is everything alright." I turned the phone face down. "Yes. Sorry. Keep going." She kept going. I heard about thirty percent of it. The rest of my brain was stuck on Viktor outside that bar. The timing of it. Him showing up at Camille's forty minutes later with his father's photographs and his careful voice and I'm running out of people I can trust.Had he followed Natalia. Had someone followed him. Had he seen me come out. Did he know what she'd given me. "would need to happen today if you want to move on the claim," the lawyer was saying.I pulled myself back. "What would." "Filing the notification of intent. It doesn't lock anything in but it establishes the date. Creates a paper trail that's harder to erase." She folded her hands on the desk."If someone wants you gone from this quietly, a filed notification makes that a lot more complicated for them." "And it flags to Viktor's legal team." "Not automatically. Not immediatel