They taught me to tell small truths and big lies with the same face. My name, in the files, is Adrian M. Vale. To the men who pay me and the ones who pretend not to know me, I’m Cardinal — a neat bird with a thin red mark. I make sure people arrive where they’re supposed to go, that they breathe long enough to tell the story someone else wants told. Sometimes I shepherd a life. Sometimes I close the book.

I say that now because it’s cheaper than saying what I really am: a professional who keeps promises for money and breaks them only when the cost is moral. It’s a job with many names — guardian, consultant, operative — and all of them have that same unromantic trait: punctuality. I am, above all, punctual.

The envelope arrived on a Thursday, slipped beneath the lamp like an apology. No courier, no signature, only a lean leather folder and the smell of lemon oil that clung to the edges. I recognized the hands that sent it before I opened it — methodical, spare. The paper inside held the photograph, the names, the itinerary. Robert and Katarina Voronina. A gala in Vienna. A directive that read like a lesson in duplicity: Protect the daughter. Gain access. Ensure presence at main ballroom. Eliminate if necessary. The last line had the sterile finality of a surgeon’s note and the audacity of men who think paper can absolve them.

I called Rook. He answered on the third ring, voice like a gravel road. “You read it?” he asked.

“Read it,” I said.

“You’re the one they want,” he said. “They want you in a suit, smiling, visible. They want trust.”

“I can be visible,” I told him. “I can be trusted.”

There was a pause, the kind that always meant someone was counting the pieces they’d be willing to lose. “Then close it. You know the terms.”

“Same as always.” I pocketed the folder. Promises between men who sell safety are paid in silence and receipt numbers. I signed on a line that did not bind my hands; I bound my hours.

The Voronina estate is a building that practices generosity with its light — chandeliered rooms that make servants look like ornaments. Guards in black watched the gates like punctuation marks. I walked through with the gait I use for rooms that are watched: open enough to be human, distant enough to make people feel safer for not knowing. My cover was simple: a contract bodyguard, hired after some vague threat to their shipping manifests; plausible, boring, and incontrovertible.

Katarina met me in an entry hall of marble and orchids, the kind of woman who was made to sit at the head of a charity luncheon and make guilt look fashionable. She smilingly extended a hand that smelled faintly of bergamot. “Mr. Vale,” she cooed. “We’ve heard—impeccable references.”

“Rook was persuasive,” I said. He is, in the right light.

Robert arrived with the smile of a man who has always been accustomed to applause. “Glad you could make it,” he boomed. “We like efficiency in this house.”

“Then we’ll begin with the obvious,” I said. “Where she spends most of her day, who has access to her phones, and what you consider a risk.”

They blinked as if I’d asked for the moon. People with fortunes protect their empires as if they were delicate glass; they often forget the fragility of the living among them. Katarina’s hand tightened around her glass for half a second, a shadow crossed her features that didn’t reach her eyes.

“She’s been—protected,” Katarina offered. “But not like this. We want someone visible. Someone she can trust.”

“Visible is a choice,” I told her. “Trust is earned.”

They wanted the optics of protection; I gave them the optics and a practical framework. Men who build lies in public like cathedrals always need the pageantry of safety. I provided it and set my price—no more, no less. They smiled and signed. Rook arranged the transfer while I ironed the suit that would be my public armor.

I walked around the luxurious hmansion trying to find my room until i found her, sitting on the staircase wearing a long silky night gown with her hair up.