The glass-and-steel monolith on the lake was designed for transparency, but its true purpose was to hide the only thing Delaney Schulz couldn't explain: the boy in the guest room.
Viktor hadn't arrived with a suitcase or a passport. Amore had brought him across the border in the back of a luxury SUV, tucked between garment bags and crates of expensive wine. He was undocumented, a "gift" of leverage that had turned into a permanent shadow. To the world, Delaney was a solitary power player. In reality, she was the guardian of a phantom.
Delaney sat at her mahogany desk, the blue light of her monitors reflecting in the dark window. She watched the silent feed of Viktor in the kitchen. He was moving with that eerie, practiced stillness she had shaped into him — not with a belt, but with the threat of the "Outside."
A notification chimed. A message from Amore, sent through an encrypted, self-destructing channel.
Delaney deleted the message with a sharp flick of her wrist. Maternal? She looked at the screen. Viktor was currently cleaning a smudge off the countertop with a microfiber cloth, his eyes vacant. She didn't feel like a mother. She felt like a curator of a stolen masterpiece.
If anyone found out about Viktor — the undocumented Bulgarian boy she used to hack into medical databases and record private salon conversations — the "Recording Angel" would be clipped. Her career wouldn't just end; it would be incinerated.
She stood up and walked into the kitchen. The floor-to-ceiling windows showed the black expanse of Lake Michigan, but the glass also acted as a mirror. She saw herself standing behind him.
Viktor flinched, the cloth dropping from his hand. He didn't turn around. He knew the rules. He was never to be seen by the windows. He was never to speak unless the "Recording" light was on.
Viktor nodded, a small, jerky motion.
Viktor said nothing. He already knew this. She had rehearsed it with him three times that week.
She paused.
She tapped the side of her headset, which was sitting on the desk beside a small black transmitter — compact, unremarkable, the kind of thing that could be mistaken for a podcast setup. The voice modulator was already attached. Whatever came through Leo Vance's earpiece tonight would be filtered, layered, unrecognizable. A ghost frequency. Untraceable to any single source.
That was the point.
She crossed the room and crouched slightly in front of him, tilting her head the way someone might if they were genuinely fond of a child. She pinched his nose between two fingers — light, almost playful, and held it for just a second too long.
Viktor didn't smile back. He had learned not to, a long time ago. But he didn't pull away either. That was the thing she had built; not affection, but the absence of resistance.
She straightened up and smoothed the front of her blazer.
It wasn't a question. She already knew. She made a point of always knowing.
Viktor moved toward the hallway to get ready. At the threshold he stopped, just for a second, his hand on the doorframe.
She didn't look up from her monitor.
Viktor disappeared into the hallway. Delaney looked at her reflection in the dark window — herself, alone, the lake black and endless behind her.
She wasn't just destroying the Fighter to justify her past. She was doing it to protect her present. Viktor was her "Clandestine Child," the living evidence of her own illegal reach. As long as the world was looking at the Fighter's bloodline, they wouldn't notice the ghost living in her own house.
She opened the file on the Detroit Nurse and got to work.