My home has never been breached.
Until tonight.
I sit in front of the monitors and watch the footage. I don’t speak. Kirill is beside me, handling the controls, moving the timeline back and forward without talking.
My temper is running very hot right now.
He knows not to push.
“Where is he?” I ask. “Where the fuck is this guy? He’s not a ghost. He was on my kitchen floor. How did he get there?”
Kirill pauses the camera that covers the back of the house and then jogs it back frame by frame.
I catch a glimpse of a shadow.
"There," I say.
Kirill pauses it and clicks to zoom in.
I look at the frame.
I stare at the frozen scene with my jaw clenched so tight I’m surprised my teeth don’t crack. That shadow shouldn’t exist. Not in my house. Not with my security.
“There’s a blind spot,” I say quietly. I know Kirill recognizes the tone. This is the voice I use right before someone dies. Violently. “How the fuck is there a blind spot?”
Kirill doesn’t answer immediately. He’s clicking through other angles, cross-referencing timestamps. His silence isn’t fear. He’s not nervous even with my temper at a rolling boil.
“Window,” he says finally. “Ground level. West side. The coverage overlaps from two cameras but there’s a gap. Maybe eighteen inches. He knew exactly where it was.”
“Someone told him.” I run my hands over my face, rubbing my eyes. “Someone on the inside gave him the layout.”
“Yes.”
“Who was on patrol for that section?”
Kirill pulls up the schedule on his tablet. His finger traces down the list. “Petrov. He was supposed to do a sweep every fifteen minutes. Last documented sweep was—" He stops. “Twenty-three minutes before we got the call.”
“Where is he now?”
“He left. He was off-duty.”
I stand up. The rage is cold now. Controlled. Useful. “Find him. Bring him to the interrogation room. I don’t care what you have to do. I want him alive, and I want him tonight.”
He walks out of the security room with his phone pressed to his ear.
I’m left alone with the cameras and video feed. Kirill purposely avoided playing it.
But I have to watch. I need to see what happened in that kitchen. I pull up the footage and hit play.
She’s smiling. Music playing. I pause and zoom in. She’s happy. Relaxed. Safe.
And then he’s there. My fist clenches as I watch the scene. She does everything right. When he hits her, I nearly call Kirill to bring the fucker back so I can mutilate his body.
My eyes are glued to the screen. I hear footsteps but don’t look away.
“She’s a fighter,” Kirill says from beside me.
“She should not have had to fight.”