She Was Only a Dog Trainer Trying to Heal a Traumatized Shepherd — Then the Mafia Boss Who Owned Him Made Her the Key to Surviving a Deadly Betrayal

Chapter 7

That afternoon, Roman called me to the penthouse again. This time, he wasn’t alone.

Three men were there — two I didn’t recognize, standing near the windows like sentries, and one who looked like he’d walked out of a corporate boardroom. Expensive suit. Silver hair. The kind of face that had negotiated billion-dollar deals.

“Odessa,” Roman said. “This is my attorney, James Mallerie. He’s going to ask you some questions about what you’ve observed.”

Mallerie sat across from me, pulled out a legal pad, and started taking notes. “Walk me through the surveillance pattern you’ve identified. Start with the first anomaly.”

I glanced at Roman. He nodded slightly, so I told Mallerie everything.

Telling it out loud was different from logging it. Out loud, the pattern took shape in a way notes couldn’t capture — the way the watchers rotated through positions like chess pieces sliding into known squares, the way Luna’s ears would drop three beats before my eyes found the tail, the way the same delivery van seemed to find parking directly across from every entrance we used. Mallerie didn’t interrupt. He just wrote, and the scratch of his pen was the only sound in the room besides my voice.

The repeating faces. The shift in positioning. The way the tail that morning hadn’t bothered to hide. The way Luna’s reactivity had changed in specific locations — like she could smell the watchers before I could see them.

“The dog’s behavior is a tell,” I said. “When she tenses at a particular corner three days in a row, that corner is compromised.”

Mallerie wrote faster. “And you’ve documented all of this?”

“Every walk. Time, location, Luna’s physical response, visible threats.”

“Mr. Kyodori.” Mallerie didn’t look up from his notes. “If Miss Kleinhart is willing to testify about surveillance patterns and document timeline inconsistencies, we can build a harassment case. Get restraining orders. Make Klov’s operation legally expensive.”

“No.” The word came out harder than I’d intended.

Both men looked at me.

“I’m not testifying in court. That wasn’t part of the deal. You said observation and reporting. You didn’t say anything about making me a public witness in whatever war you’re fighting.” I kept my voice steady, the same voice I used on a shaking animal. “The second my face shows up in legal filings, I’m not invisible anymore. I’m a target with a name and an address in the public record.”

Mallerie started to argue, but Roman held up a hand. “She’s right.” He looked at his attorney. “We use her documentation as internal intelligence. Nothing that puts her name on paper. Find another angle for the legal pressure.”

“That limits our options significantly.”

“Then get creative.” Roman’s tone said the discussion was over. He turned to me. “Anything else you need?”

“Yes.” I pulled out my phone — the secure one — and showed him a photo I’d taken that morning at the vet clinic. “I noticed something off about the medication log for Luna.”

Roman’s expression sharpened. “Show me.”

I pulled up the documentation I’d been keeping. Dates. Dosages. Who’d signed off on each entry. “Three weeks ago, someone adjusted Luna’s anxiety medication — increased the dosage by fifteen percent. It’s logged under Dr. Patterson’s signature, but the handwriting doesn’t match his other entries. And the date stamp is wrong. It shows a Sunday, but the clinic is closed on Sundays.”

Roman took my phone, studied the image for a long moment. “You noticed a medication discrepancy in a log you’re not supposed to have access to.”

“I noticed my dog was more sedated than she should have been, so I checked the records.” I met his eyes. “Someone inside the clinic is either sloppy or compromised.”

The room went very quiet.

Roman handed my phone to one of the men by the window. “Patterson’s complete records. Cross-reference every entry for the past six months. I want to know if this is incompetence or sabotage.”

Then he looked at me, and something in his expression had changed. “Second win, Odessa. You’re proving valuable.”

“I’m proving observant. There’s a difference.”

“In my world, they’re the same thing.”

He dismissed Mallerie and the two sentries with a single glance, and when the door clicked shut behind them, we were alone in the penthouse for the first time since the morning walk. The silence settled over us like a held breath.

“Roman,” I said, and the sound of his name in that quiet room made me feel like I’d stepped off a curb I hadn’t seen. “You knew before I finished my sentence. The medication log. The handwriting. You already had Patterson’s records being pulled before I handed you my phone.”

“I suspected.” He didn’t deny it. “I didn’t know. You confirmed it. That’s what I need you to understand, Odessa — I have people who collect threats, people who analyze threats, people who remove threats. I don’t have anyone who notices the dog is too sedated to walk properly.” He paused. “That’s a more valuable skill than any of theirs, and they’re paid more than you.”

I didn’t have an answer to that. I was still holding it in my chest, turning it over, when he moved to the side table and picked up the framed photograph of his father.

“Konstantin Kyodori,” he said, and for a moment his voice went somewhere unguarded. “He believed that money was armor. He was wrong. Armor has to be earned, not bought.” He set the photograph down carefully, the way a man handles something that once hurt him. “You’re not a witness in my war, Odessa. You’re the one who sees the war coming.”

I had no answer for that. I was still holding it in my chest when he moved to the window and stood looking down at the street — at the black sedan parked across from the entrance, at the shadows shifting at the edges of the flood of lamplight. And for the first time, I understood what it cost him to trust anyone. He’d lost his father to a back door, and he’d spent years building walls high enough that no one could ever open one behind him again. And now here I was — a stranger with a notebook and a leash, already inside the walls, already seeing the cracks.