Chapter 70 Leak
The house was suffocating.
Every shadowed corner, every creak of the floorboards, felt like a threat. The ventilation grate in the Master Suite had been welded shut by Silas’s team, but the knowledge that someone had been inside—had bypassed the cameras, the guards, the locks, just to leave a poisoned saucer and a note—made the air feel heavy and unbreathable.
Tristan had turned the estate into a military installation.
There were checkpoints at every entrance. Dogs patrolled the perimeter. Vane had hired a private intelligence firm to scrub the dark web for chatter, looking for whoever Ida had hired.
But I couldn't live like this. I couldn't sit in the center of the fortress, waiting for the siege to break me.
"I need to leave the house," I said.
It was Tuesday morning. Nero was still at the veterinary clinic, stable but weak. Tristan and I were in the library. He was pacing in front of the unlit fireplace, a phone pressed to his ear, barking orders at someone on the board. I was sitting on the leather sofa, staring at a blank blueprint.
Tristan stopped pacing. He slowly lowered the phone, ending the call without saying goodbye.
"No," he said. The word was flat, absolute.
"Tristan, I have a meeting with the historic preservation society downtown in an hour. We need their final approval on the facade restoration."
"I'll have Vane go."
"Vane is a lawyer, not an architect," I argued, standing up. "He doesn't know the difference between Corinthian and Doric columns. They need me there to answer technical questions."
"They can do a video call," Tristan countered, crossing the room to stand in front of me. His physical presence was overwhelming, a solid wall of muscle and stubbornness. "You are not leaving this property, Mina. The police still haven't identified the man in the van or the person who got into our bedroom. You are a target."
"I am always going to be a target as long as Ida is pulling strings," I said, my voice rising. "Are you suggesting I stay locked in here forever? That I never go to the office? That I never see my friends?"
"I am suggesting you stay here until we neutralize the threat!"
"And how long will that take, Tristan? A week? A month? A year?" I threw my hands up in frustration. "She’s paying people with untraceable funds. She could hire a new person every week. I refuse to let her turn my life into a prison sentence!"
"It's not a prison, it's a sanctuary!"
"It's a cage!" I yelled back. "You’ve built a gilded cage, and you’re standing guard at the door! But I am not a bird, Tristan. I have to work. I have to live!"
He grabbed my shoulders. His grip was tight, bordering on painful, but I didn't pull away.
"I almost lost you," he ground out, his voice trembling with suppressed rage and fear. "The van. The poison. If that ethylene glycol had been in your coffee instead of on a plate..."
He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head sharply as if trying to dislodge the image.
"I can't lose you again," he whispered. "I won't survive it."
My anger faltered, melting into a deep, agonizing empathy. He wasn't trying to control me out of malice; he was trying to control the world because he was terrified.
I reached up and covered his hands with mine.
"You won't lose me," I said softly. "But you can't protect me by suffocating me. We need a different plan."
"What plan?" he asked, opening his eyes. They were dark, stormy amber. "What plan involves you walking out that front door while a killer is looking for you?"
"The plan where we don't wait for him to find me," I said, the idea crystallizing in my mind as I spoke. "The plan where we draw him out."
Tristan went completely still.
"No."
"Think about it, Tristan. He’s playing a game. He’s leaving notes, poisoning the cat, crashing the van. He wants to terrify us. He wants us jumping at shadows." I stepped closer, looking directly into his eyes. "So, we give him a shadow to jump at. We set a trap."
"Absolutely not," Tristan said, dropping his hands from my shoulders and taking a step back. "I am not using you as bait."
"I am already bait! Ida put a target on my back the day I walked back into this house. We can't change that. But we can control the narrative."
"It's too dangerous."
"It's more dangerous to sit here and wait for him to slip past Silas again!" I argued. "He knows the estate. He knows the blind spots. We need to lure him somewhere else. Somewhere we control."
Tristan shook his head, pacing away from me. "Where? The city is too crowded. Too many variables."
"The Opera House," I said.
Tristan stopped. He turned slowly to look at me.
The old Opera House downtown was one of Veridian’s largest ongoing acquisitions. It was a massive, crumbling structure that we were slated to demolish and rebuild next year. Right now, it was empty. Abandoned.
"The Opera House is a labyrinth," Tristan said, his voice hard. "It’s dark, it’s structurally unsound, and there’s a hundred ways in and out."
"Exactly," I said. "It’s the perfect place for a stalker to corner someone. But it’s our building. We have the blueprints. Silas can rig it with hidden cameras and tactical teams. We control the environment."
"And what exactly is the bait?" Tristan asked, his eyes narrowing.
"Me," I said simply. "I’ll leak my schedule. I’ll make sure it’s known that I’m doing a solo site inspection of the Opera House on Thursday evening to finalize the demolition plans."
"No," Tristan said again. The word was a roar.
He crossed the room in three strides, backing me against the bookshelves.