"You have twenty-four hours to produce the documents," the man said, "or I take something of value instead."

He looked at me when he said it.

Not at my father. Not at the man across the table who had borrowed money from the Volkov organization and failed to return it in the format requested. At me.

My name is Sera Voss. I'm a contract negotiator. I came to this meeting because my father called me at six in the morning and said he needed someone who could talk to these people, and I was the only person he knew who had ever successfully talked to anyone in a suit that cost more than his car.

I had not expected to become the thing being talked about.

"She has nothing to do with this," my father said.

"She's here," the man said. "That makes her relevant."

The man was Nikolai Volkov. Niko, people called him when they were being casual, which almost no one was. Thirty-four years old, built like someone who spent his leisure time doing things that required strength and his working hours doing things that required something colder than strength. Dark eyes that moved through a room like a security camera — scanning, recording, missing nothing.

He was looking at me the way you looked at something you were about to acquire.

"What are the terms?" I said.

My father made a sound. I ignored it.

Niko's eyes sharpened slightly. Like he had expected me to flinch and was recalibrating.

"You stay in my house," he said. "Until the debt is settled. As insurance."

"Insurance that does what?" I said.

"Guarantees your father stays motivated."

"He's already motivated," I said. "He just doesn't have the documents yet because they're caught in a processing delay at the county recorder's office and it takes eleven business days for that office to process property transfer requests." I held his gaze. "I can show you the tracking number. The delay is verifiable."

Niko looked at me.

"Eleven days," he said.

"Thirteen, actually, because of two bank holidays in that window," I said. "But we're already on day four. Nine days remaining."

"And if the transfer doesn't complete?"

"Then you take the property directly and my father signs a deed in lieu," I said. "Which gets you the asset without the processing delay and without a collateral arrangement that has more legal exposure than I think you want."

The man beside Niko — older, with the particular sharp stillness of someone who was calculating — made a small sound.

Niko looked at him briefly. Then back at me.

"What's your name?" he said.

"Sera Voss."

"What do you do?"

"Negotiate," I said.

A pause.

"Nine days," he said.

"Nine days," I confirmed.

He stood.

My father exhaled.

"But," Niko said, still looking at me, "you come anyway. Not as collateral. As a gesture of good faith."

I looked at him.

"That's the same thing with different words," I said.

"Yes," he said. "It is."

He held the door open.

I looked at my father.

My father looked at the table.

I looked back at Niko.

"I have a job," I said.

"I'll have someone collect what you need," he said.

I stood.

I walked through the door.

I was going to need a very good exit strategy. The car outside my father building was black and professional. I got in. I sent two emails on the drive. One to my assistant: reschedule everything, working remotely, unknown period. One to Dasha my emergency contact: wait seventy-two hours, then check. I had seventy-two hours. I used the drive to think. Nikolai Volkov ran the Volkov organization. Three cities, legitimate face in real estate and shipping. He had looked at me when he named me as the thing of value. Not at my father. At me. He had researched me before the meeting. He wanted something specific. I was going to find out what. The gate closed behind the car. The house was in the hills. Expensive, secluded, the kind of property that existed in the gap between official maps and real geography. I sat in the back seat and finished the mental photograph I had been building since I got in. Every detail. I was going to need the details. The driver pulled up to the entrance. A woman appeared in the doorway. She was in her forties and had the look of someone who had been running this household for long enough to be part of its architecture. I got out of the car. She introduced herself as Mila. She showed me to the east wing. I unpacked what they had collected from my apartment. My laptop. My notebook. Three work outfits. The specific notebook I kept on the left side of my desk. They had been inside my apartment. They had known which notebook. That told me the research had been thorough. I sat at the desk and opened the notebook. I wrote: objectives. Then I started filling them in. My father had called me at six in the morning. He had said he needed someone who could talk to these people. He had not told me I was the someone who would be leaving with them. That was new information. I processed it on the drive. I was good at processing new information on the drive. I was good at processing new information in general. It was the core of the work. Someone tells you a thing, you understand what the thing actually means, you use that understanding. Niko Volkov had been looking at me with the specific attention of a man who had already decided I was going to be part of the solution to something. I was going to find out what the something was.