Chapter 3
XANDER
The girl stares at the corpse for thirty seconds before her survival instincts override her shock.
She doesn't scream or faint or do any of the predictable things civilians do when confronted with violence.
Her breathing becomes rapid and shallow, but she remains standing.
Useful information—she's not weak.
"What's your name?" I ask, keeping the pistol trained on her chest.
"Nadya." Her voice barely qualifies as a whisper.
"Nadya Korshin."
Her eyes flick down to where my previous cleaner lies in a puddle of his own blood, then back up to my face.
"Well, Nadya Korshin, you answered an advertisement for cleaning services. Congratulations."
I gesture toward the blood covering the apartment floor.
"This is your first assignment."
She looks from the corpse to the gun to my face, then toward the door while the phone still trembles in her hand.
The mathematics don't favor escape, and she's smart enough to recognize that reality.
"I don't understand," she says.
Now she's backing away, eyes wide like a little animal scared of a predator.
"Understanding isn't required. Compliance is."
I reach into my coat pocket and remove a pair of latex gloves, tossing them at her feet.
"Put those on and get to work."
"I can't."
Her hands shake as she speaks.
"I need to call the police. Someone's been murdered."
"Someone has been eliminated for threatening my organization. The police won't be investigating because this apartment doesn't officially exist and neither does the man who died in it. The building has been condemned."
I move closer, letting her see the complete absence of mercy in my eyes.
"You have two choices. Clean this mess thoroughly, or join him on the floor."
Fear transforms her face into something pale and fragile.
She bends down to retrieve the gloves, and it appears that she may collapse at any second.
Good.
Terror makes people cooperative.
"There are cleaning supplies in the kitchen," I tell her.
"Industrial bleach, scrub brushes, garbage bags. Everything you need to make this room look like nothing happened here."
Nadya pulls on the gloves and walks toward the kitchen on wobbling legs.
I follow at a distance, watching her examine the supplies I arranged earlier. Professional-grade chemicals that will eliminate every trace of blood and tissue from the floors.
"How long do I have?" she asks without looking at me.
"As long as it takes to do the job properly. Rushing leads to mistakes. Mistakes leave evidence. Evidence brings investigations that complicate my business arrangements."
She returns to the living room carrying a bucket of hot water mixed with bleach.
The smell fills the apartment immediately.
She kneels beside the largest blood pool and begins scrubbing with long, even strokes.
"Tell me about yourself, Nadya."
I settle into a chair near the window where I can monitor both her work and the street below at the same time.
"Do you live alone?"
I don't need to know these details except for when it comes time for her to vanish.
Then I will need to know who is out there who could potentially miss her.
"No."
She doesn't elaborate, focusing on the stains beneath her brush.
"Family?"
"My sister. Her children."
"Anyone who might come looking if you don't return home tonight?"
The question makes her pause in her scrubbing.
She looks up at me sideways and glares out the corner of her eye.
She understands that I'm assessing her worth to others in society.
Smart girl.
I'll remember that too.
"My sister expects me to call when my interview ends," she says carefully.
"Then you'll call her and explain that the position requires overnight training. Tell her you'll be home tomorrow morning with good news about steady employment."
Nadya nods and returns to her work.
The blood comes up slowly, requiring multiple applications of bleach and considerable scrubbing to remove completely.
She approaches the task with more competence than I expected from someone who answered a vague classified advertisement.
I thought I'd have to spill more blood tonight, but it appears she may be competent after all.
"What did you do before answering my employment offer?" I ask.
"Various jobs. Waitressing, retail, temporary office work."
She moves to a fresh section of floor and begins scrubbing again.
"Nothing permanent."
"Education?"
"Some university. I didn't finish."
"What field of study?"
Her hands still for a moment as she tucks her head down, like she doesn't want to tell me, then she resumes her work.
"Forensic science."
Now that captures my attention.
A woman with forensics training stumbling into my operation by pure coincidence strains credibility beyond reasonable limits.
Either she's lying about her background or fate has delivered exactly the resource I need for the war against the Sokolov Brotherhood.
"How much forensic science?" I press.
"Three and a half years. I left school when my mother became ill."
Nadya's voice grows quiet.
"She died last spring. Cancer."
The grief in her tone suggests honesty, but I've encountered skilled liars before.
Professional deception requires verification through testing.
If she really has been through forensic training, this should be simple for her.
"Stop cleaning," I order.
"Look at this scene and tell me what happened here."
She sits back on her heels, studying the apartment with different eyes now that she's no longer shaking from the shock and fear.
I watch her examine the blood patterns, the position of the corpse, the scattered contents of the briefcase.
"The victim entered through the front door," she begins, her voice growing stronger as she shifts into analytical mode.
"He wasn't forced inside. No signs of struggle in the hallway or near the entrance. He came here willingly."
"Continue."
"He was carrying the briefcase when he died, still gripping it when he fell, which means the attack came without warning. No time to defend himself or use the case as a shield."
Her eyes trace the blood spatter on the walls.
"Single gunshot to the base of the skull. Close range, probably contact distance. The killer was standing directly behind him, using a weapon identical to the one in your hand, small caliber pistol."
Accurate so far.
I shot him while he was counting the money he thought would buy his freedom from my employ and he never saw it coming.
"The blood pattern suggests he fell forward immediately," Nadya continues.
"No movement after being shot. Death was instantaneous. The killer stood over him for several minutes afterward, probably searching through the briefcase contents."
"How can you tell?"
"Shoe prints in the blood. Size eleven or twelve, expensive leather soles. The pattern shows the killer walked around the body multiple times, then stood in that spot near the kitchen while the blood pooled."
She points to an area where my footprints are clearly visible in the dried blood.
"Probably making phone calls or waiting for instructions."
Every detail is correct.
This woman has genuine forensic training and the analytical mind to apply it effectively.
She read the crime scene like an experienced investigator.
"What else?" I ask.
"The victim knew his killer. Or at least trusted him enough to turn his back in a confined space. This wasn't a robbery or a random attack. It was an execution carried out by someone the victim believed was an ally."
I stand up from the chair and walk closer, studying her face for signs of deception or performance.
She meets my gaze without flinching, waiting for my evaluation of her analysis.
"Your assessment is completely accurate," I tell her.
"This is my previous cleaner, and he thought he could buy his freedom to leave my organization. He was wrong."
The confirmation that she's been cleaning up the aftermath of an assassination makes her face go pale again, but she doesn't break down or start pleading for her life.
The forensic training has given her a framework for processing violence as data rather than horror.
"Finish the cleaning," I order.
"Make sure you get the blood from between the floorboards. Use the detail brushes for the cracks."
Nadya returns to her work as I stand over her, applying her scientific knowledge to the elimination of evidence.
She scrubs methodically, testing each section with a chemical solution that reveals traces of blood invisible to the naked eye.
It's a professional technique that would satisfy any crime scene investigator.
I make all of my cleaners use it.
Two hours pass before she finishes the job completely.
The apartment looks pristine, smells of industrial cleaner, and shows no sign that a man died violently on these floors.
She bags the corpse like she's handled human remains before, then cleans the bathroom and kitchen to remove any DNA evidence I might have left behind.
"It's finished," she says, stripping off the latex gloves and placing them in the garbage bag with the other contaminated materials which I'll take to the warehouse across town and burn.
I inspect her work, looking for missed blood spots or forensic evidence that could compromise the scene.
The floors are spotless.
The walls show no spatter patterns.
Even the grout lines between tiles in the kitchen have been scrubbed clean of organic material.
And the black light shows no trace of body fluids anywhere.
"Acceptable," I tell her.
Relief floods her face at the word.
She believes completion of the task means survival, that demonstrating competence has earned her freedom to return to her normal life.
It just shows dangerous naivety about how my organization operates.
I reach into my coat and remove a thick stack of rubles.
More money than she probably earns in two months at whatever legitimate employment she's been pursuing.
Her eyes widen when she sees the amount.
"Payment for tonight's work," I explain, offering her the cash.
"Consider it a performance bonus."
She shakes her head and backs away.
"I can't take that."
"You don't want a half million rubles?"
I lift one eyebrow and watch her blanch.
Her throat works as she swallows hard.
"Nadya… Ptichka, you're not getting out of this. I own you now. Take the cash."
I gesture at her with the stack of bills and she scowls, then snatches it from me and shoves it inside her coat sleeve.
"Can I go home now?" she asks, still avoiding eye contact.
"In a moment."
I retrieve a burner phone from my pocket and hold it out to her.
"Take this."
"I don't need a phone. I already have one."
Again, she protests.
She is so naive, so beautiful too.
If I didn't have plans, I'd fuck her right now just to show her who's boss.
But then, I've already decided not to kill her.
One gift is enough for this evening.
"You need this phone. When it rings, you answer immediately. When I tell you to come somewhere, you come. When I give you work to do, you do it without questions or objections."
The shock sinks in slowly.
She thought this was a single transaction, a horrible experience she could survive and then forget.
The reality is that she's now part of my operation whether she wants to be or not.
"I can't," she whispers.
"I have a family. Responsibilities. A normal life."
"You had a normal life. Now you have employment that pays better than anything else available to a university dropout with no professional references."
I press the phone into her hand.
"The alternative is a politseyskiy explaining to your sister why you never came home from your interview tonight."
She stares at the device in her palm, understanding that accepting it means crossing a line she can't uncross.
But refusing means immediate consequences for her and everyone she cares about.
"If you tell anyone what you've seen here, if you go to the police, if you try to run away from this arrangement, everyone you love will suffer the same fate as the man you just cleaned."
I let the threat sink in.
"Your sister, her children… Others I will find and torment."
Her face goes as white as paper.
There's no escape from the situation she's stumbled into.
"I understand," she says in a voice barely above a whisper.
"Good. Go home. Tell your sister the interview went well and you'll be starting work soon. Answer the phone when it rings. Follow instructions exactly."
Nadya nods and walks toward the apartment door in shock.
Her life has been permanently altered by answering a classified advertisement.
I watch her leave, then begin my own cleanup of the scene—removing the last traces of my presence, ensuring the apartment will remain empty and forgotten until the building's eventual demolition.
I'll send a team for the body and that will be that.
Nadya Korshin has forensic training and the analytical mind to read crime scenes like a pro.
Skills that could prove invaluable in my war against the Sokolov Brotherhood.
Instead of disposing of a witness, I've acquired an asset, and what an asset she'll be.
The question now is whether that asset will prove useful enough to justify the risk of keeping her alive.