Chapter 2 The Petrov King
Chapter two
The Petrov King
Maksim
The smell of coffee and old wood fills my office at eight in the morning, same as it has every morning for the past fifteen years. Philadelphia compound, third floor, corner office with windows that overlook the grounds. Everything exactly where it should be.
Except me.
I haven't slept. Again. Spent the night in my study with a bottle of vodka and Elena's photograph, tracing her name on the mahogany desk until my finger went numb. A prayer I don't believe in anymore, to a god who stopped listening fifteen years ago.
"Pakhan." Sergei's voice cuts through my thoughts. He's standing in the doorway, tablet in hand, looking exactly like he always does—pressed suit, neutral expression, the kind of loyalty you can't buy but somehow I earned anyway. "Morning briefing."
I wave him in without looking up from the contract I'm pretending to review. It's for a new, completely legitimate shipping venture, the kind of business Alexei Morozov keeps pushing as the future of our world.
"Start with the money," I say, because money is simple. Money doesn't bleed out on cream-colored carpets while you hold it and promise things you can't keep.
Sergei scrolls through his tablet. "Philadelphia operations are up twelve percent this quarter. The shipping contracts are performing above projections. The restaurant investments are—"
"Skip all that and go straight to the problems."
He doesn't even pause. Knows me too well. "There's been some chatter about stolen Fabergé eggs surfacing in Manhattan. High-end pieces from the Russian imperial era being sold through a private gallery."
I should care about this. Stolen Russian artifacts are usually connected to our world somehow—either stolen by us, from us, or traded between families as currency when cash is too traceable.
But I don't care.
"And?" I keep my eyes on the contract, the words blurring together into meaningless shapes.
"The gallery owner is Sonya Morozova."
My hand stops moving.
Morozova.
The name hits me like a fist to the chest, and suddenly, before I realize what I'm doing, I’m tracing Elena’s name on the contract, my finger moving on autopilot while my brain tries to catch up with what Sergei just said.
"Morozova," I repeat, my voice coming out rougher than it should. "As in—"
"Alexei's cousin. Second cousin, specifically. Former ballet dancer." Sergei's watching me now, and I know what he sees. Sees the tracing, sees the way my jaw tightens at "ballet dancer," sees fifteen years of grief trying to claw its way out of my chest.
Former ballet dancer.
No.
No, I'm not doing this. I’m not letting two words rip open scars that never healed right in the first place.
"Full file," I manage. "Everything. Now."
Sergei nods and leaves, and I'm alone again with Elena's photograph and the contract I've traced her name across without meaning to. The letters are messy, frantic. Not the careful, deliberate pattern I usually create.
I'm losing control.
I stand, walk to the window, force myself to breathe.
The compound spreads out below me—high walls, security checkpoints, men who answer to me without question.
Philadelphia is mine. Has been mine since I took over at twenty-nine, since the day I buried my pregnant wife and transformed into something harder, colder, stronger.
Steel.
That's what they call me now. Maksim "Steel" Petrov.
Except right now, the words loop through my head like a song I can't stop hearing. Elena was a ballerina. Prima ballerina at the Moscow Bolshoi, the best of the best, moving across stages like she was made of light and music and dreams I didn't deserve.
Until someone killed her for it.
I press my palm against the cool glass, trying to ground myself. Trying to remember that this Sonya Morozova—whoever she is—isn't Elena. Isn't my problem.
Except she is connected. To Alexei. To the Morozov family. To the reform movement that got my wife killed.
And she's a former ballerina.
Former.
What does that mean? Retired? Injured?
Sergei returns with a physical file—old school, the way I prefer. Paper doesn't crash, doesn't get hacked, doesn't betray you with deleted browser history. He sets it on my desk and steps back, waiting.
I open it.
Sonya Morozova. Twenty-nine years old. Born in St. Petersburg, trained at the Vaganova Academy, joined the Mariinsky Ballet at eighteen. Made principal dancer at twenty-three—youngest in the company's recent history.
Career ended at twenty-four.
I flip to the next page, already knowing what I'm going to find, dreading it anyway.
There's a newspaper clipping, Russian text with a grainy photo. The headline translates to "Tragedy at the Mariinsky: Principal Dancer Injured in Opening Night Accident."
Accident.
I read the article twice, my Russian getting rusty but still good enough to understand what happened. Opening night of Giselle. Her partner—Anton Kozlov—failed to catch her during a lift. She fell. Shattered her ankle in front of two thousand people.
Career over.
Just like that.
The article includes quotes from witnesses, from the theater management, from Anton himself expressing his devastation at the "tragic accident." It includes a photo of Sonya being carried offstage, her face twisted in pain, her white costume pooling around her like a shroud.
It includes everything except the truth.
Because I know that this wasn't an accident.
Ballerinas don't just fall.
They're dropped.
I flip through more pages. After the Mariinsky, there are medical records—three surgeries, extensive physical therapy, permanent mobility limitations.
Then a complete pivot: she came to the States a year after the accident, enrolled in grad school at NYU, started working in galleries, and earned a degree in art history.
Three years ago, during her second year at NYU, she opened her own gallery in Manhattan—knowing exactly what she wanted to build even while still studying.
Upper East Side, high-end clientele, specializing in Russian imperial art, known for understanding the provenance and history of pieces that most people only see in museums, exactly the kind of Russian artifacts that flow through Bratva channels when legitimacy isn't an option.
The gallery's been successful. Very successful. She's made a name for herself and built something real from the ruins of her dance career.
She survived.
She survived, and I don't know why that matters so much. I turn to the last page of the file.
It's a still image, pulled from what looks like a security camera. Grainy, black and white, timestamped from last night at 11:57 PM.
Sonya is dancing.
Surrounded by paintings and sculptures and expensive things that don't matter in what must be her gallery. She’s dancing on pointe, her body in a perfect arabesque despite the ankle that was supposedly destroyed five years ago.
Her face is turned away from the camera, but I can see the line of her neck, the arch of her back, the way she holds herself like she's still on a stage even though she's completely alone.
She's dancing at midnight in her closed gallery, and something about that—about the solitude, the privacy, the desperate need to move even though it must hurt—breaks something in my chest.
I slam the file closed.
"Where did you get this photo?" My voice sounds wrong. Too rough. Too affected.
"Security footage from a contact we have in Manhattan. The gallery's system isn't exactly Fort Knox. He pulled it as part of the background check." Sergei pauses. "Should I not have included it?"
"No. It's fine. It's—" I stop, because I don't know how to finish that sentence. Because seeing her dance alone in the dark feels like looking at something I shouldn't see, something private and painful, too close to my own midnight rituals.
I spend my nights tracing Elena's name.
She spends hers dancing for ghosts.
We're both haunted by things we can't let go.
"The stolen Fabergé eggs," I say abruptly, redirecting. "What's the provenance? Where did they come from?"
Sergei consults his tablet. "Two are from her permanent collection, legitimately acquired through auction houses. The third is on loan from a private collector in London. All paperwork appears clean, but you know how that goes with Russian imperial pieces."
"They could have been stolen decades ago and laundered through enough sales that the trail's cold."
"Exactly. The concern is whether she's knowingly moving stolen goods or if she's being used as an unwitting channel."
"Run deep background on the gallery's acquisition history. I want to know every piece she's sold in the last three years, where they came from, where they went." I pause. "And get me an invitation to her next exhibition."
Sergei's eyebrows rise slightly. "You're planning to attend?"
"I'm planning to investigate if Alexei's cousin is compromising Philadelphia's interests with her gallery operations." The lie is transparent, and we both know it.
"Of course, Pakhan. There's an exhibition opening this Saturday. 'Lost Romanov Treasures.' Should be easy enough to arrange attendance."
"Do it."
He nods and turns to leave, but I stop him with a question I shouldn't ask. "The file says she's Alexei's cousin. How close?"
"Second cousin. Her grandmother and Alexei's maternal grandfather were siblings. Not close growing up—different cities, different lives. But still family. Still connected to the Morozov bloodline."
Which means she's connected to the reform movement, and that I should hate her on principle.
I should want nothing to do with another ballerina connected to the families who think cooperation with law enforcement makes us safer instead of dead.
Yet, I'm opening my laptop and searching for performance videos.