The sign said restricted. He let me stay anyway…
That should have been my first warning…
It was the moment I stopped listening to warnings.
He crossed the floor in four strides and stopped inches from my camera.
His hand closed over my wrist before I could lower it.
I forgot how to breathe before he said a word.
Grisha has one rule. Never let anyone close enough to bury.
Twenty years, and he’s never broken it.
I’m here to catalogue the family’s collection. I’m also chasing a name my grandfather buried in a locked notebook: the Keeper.
I am not here to notice him. I do anyway.
But wait.
My grandfather’s secrets and his wife’s murder lead back to the same man — smiling for the cameras in the Sorokin ballroom.
I know too much to walk away clean now.
The way he watches a room like he’s already lost someone in it...
The way he says my name like a debt he’s still deciding whether to collect...
He built that wall to survive losing someone once.
Too bad the Keeper was never done collecting old debts — and neither is Grisha, now that he’s decided I’m his.
