Chapter 4
NADYA
The street outside the apartment building feels different than it did three hours ago.
The same broken streetlights flicker over the same cracked pavement, but now every shadow could conceal someone watching me.
Every footstep behind me could belong to one of Xander's associates, making sure I follow his instructions exactly.
I force my legs to carry me toward the metro station at a normal pace.
Running would draw attention, and attention means questions I can't answer.
The stack of rubles burns against my side where I clutch it inside my coat.
More money than I've held in months, payment for scrubbing a man's blood from floors while his killer sat watching me work.
The burner phone weighs nothing in my other pocket, but I'm reminded of its presence with every step and every time it thuds against my leg.
An electronic leash that connects me to a world I never wanted to enter.
A world I never believed truly existed until now.
I fucked up, and now I'm tethered to a lion who will devour me if I don’t answer that phone.
The metro car is nearly empty at this hour, a few late workers heading home from second jobs, a handful of students returning from evening classes.
They're just normal people living normal lives, unaware that someone among them just spent hours cleaning up an execution.
If I had blood on my hands, they'd know, but would they even notice?
I study my reflection in the dark window and wonder if the experience has changed something visible about me, left some mark that others might recognize.
My hands still smell like bleach despite washing them three times before leaving the apartment.
The chemical scent clings to my skin and hair, haunting me.
I press my face against the cold glass and try not to think about that dead man's empty eyes staring at nothing while I scrubbed his blood from the spaces between floorboards.
Forensic science teaches you to read violence as data.
Blood spatter patterns reveal the angle of impact.
Wound characteristics indicate the weapon used.
The position of a corpse tells you how death occurred and whether the victim had time to fight or flee.
All those textbook lessons made tonight's work possible and gave me the analytical framework to process horror as nothing more than technical information.
But textbooks don't prepare you for the stench of bile and feces, or the way urine soaks their clothing.
The way blood smells metallic and sweet when there's enough of it pooled on the floor.
How it dries into something so thoroughly staining that it requires serious scrubbing to remove completely.
The sound your brush makes when it works loose the coagulated pieces that have settled into wood grain.
The train carries me north through neighborhoods that become progressively safer as we approach the city center.
Street lighting improves.
Graffiti disappears from building walls.
The passengers around me look less desperate, less worn down by whatever circumstances drove them onto the metro at midnight.
I count the money in my pocket without removing it from my coat completely.
He paid me in small bills too, ones easily spent on rent or groceries, or gifts for Anya and Mikhail for the holidays.
It's blood money earned by helping a killer cover his tracks, but money that could solve problems I've been carrying since our mother's funeral.
The moral repugnancy makes my stomach turn.
I've become an accessory to murder in exchange for financial stability, traded my safety and possibly my soul for the ability to provide for my family.
And it sickens me.
I'm a monster like him.
That man has a family somewhere searching for him now, waiting for him to come home.
And he never will.
They will mourn him the way I mourn Mamochka, the way I ache for her arms to come around me and tell me it's okay.
And they will have no justice because I erased his murder from existence.
My reflection stares back at me from the train window, and I see a stranger.
Someone capable of kneeling in a pool of blood and scrubbing it clean while an armed man watches.
Someone who can lie to her sister's face about where the money came from and how she earned it.
The transformation happened so quickly, I barely recognized it occurring.
When I emerge from Sokolniki station, snow has begun falling, light flakes that melt on contact with the pavement, turning the sidewalks slick and dark with moisture.
I walk carefully toward my sister's apartment building, rehearsing the story I'll tell about the interview and the position I've supposedly accepted.
Hotel cleaning work.
Overnight shifts that pay well because most people don't want to work those hours.
Nothing dangerous or complicated, just scrubbing floors and cleaning halls and hotel amenities while guests sleep.
A reasonable explanation for why I'll be gone several nights each week and why I'll return home with cash payments.
She's never going to believe me, but the truth would destroy her and terrify her.
We'd both be forced to leave Moscow permanently, and how would we survive then?
The elevator in Irina's building actually functions, unlike the one in the apartment tonight.
The images of which I can't shake from my head.
I'm going to have nightmares.
I use my key to enter the apartment quietly, hoping Irina has gone to bed and I can postpone this conversation until morning.
But light spills from the kitchen, and I hear the familiar sound of her evening tea ritual.
She always makes chamomile before sleeping, a habit inherited from our mother.
"Nadya?" she calls when she hears the door close.
"How did the interview go?"
I pause feeling frozen.
There's no escape.
I hang my coat in the closet and walk toward the kitchen, my mind still scrambling for details that'll make my story convincing.
Irina sits at the small table with a steaming mug, still wearing her nursing scrubs from today's shift at the hospital.
"It went well," I tell her, settling into the chair across from her.
"I got the position."
Relief floods her face immediately.
"That's so good. Tell me about the work."
"Hotel cleaning. Overnight shifts at a luxury place near the city center."
The lies flow more easily than I expected, but the guilt is consuming me from the inside out.
"They need someone reliable who can work independently without supervision."
"What are the hours?"
"Flexible scheduling. Some weeks more than others, depending on occupancy rates and special events."
I avoid her eyes, focusing on the steam rising from her tea mug.
"The pay is excellent because most people don't want to work nights."
"That explains why they interviewed you so late," Irina says.
"When do you start?"
"Training begins next week. They'll call when they need me."
Another lie, but this one feels necessary to explain why my schedule will be unpredictable.
"The manager was impressed with my attention to detail."
That's not a lie at all.
Xander praised my ability to notice the tiny things.
It makes me feel dirty now, that I'm good at something that's so bad.
It makes me want to do what my mother wanted for me—find and catch killers.
But now I'm trapped, forced to help one.
"I'm so proud of you," Irina continues.
"Steady employment with good pay will make such a difference for all of us."
The pride in her voice makes my chest tighten with guilt.
She believes I've found honest work that will help support her children and contribute to household expenses.
The reality is that I've been conscripted into an organization that eliminates people who cross them and I’m threatened with the deaths of everyone I love if I refuse to cooperate.
"The children will be excited about Novy God this year," she adds.
"We might actually be able to afford presents and a proper celebration."
Every gift I buy with Xander's money will remind me how I earned it.
Every smile on the children's faces will carry the knowledge that their happiness was purchased with that same dirty money.
I might just throw up right here.
"Yes," I manage to say.
"Novy God will be better this year."
Irina drains her tea mug and rises from the table.
"I should get some sleep before my shift tomorrow. The emergency department has been busier than usual lately."
She kisses my forehead before heading toward her bedroom, the same gesture our mother used to make when she tucked us in as children.
The affection feels undeserved now, directed at someone who no longer exists.
The Nadya who left for a job interview tonight was still innocent.
The one who returned has blood under her fingernails and a burner phone connecting her to Moscow's criminal underground.
I sit alone in the kitchen after Irina goes to bed, staring at the money I've placed on the table.
Enough rubles to solve immediate problems and provide security for weeks to come.
All I had to do was describe to a man how he executed someone, then clean up the evidence while he held a gun on me.
The rational part of my mind understands that I had no choice.
Refuse Xander's demands, and I would've joined the body on the floor.
Accept them, and I live to see my family again.
What I did was simple even though the moral equation is impossible to solve.
But sitting here in my sister's kitchen, surrounded by a normal family life, I understand that something fundamental has changed.
I can't return to who I was before tonight, can't pretend that answering a classified advertisement didn't lead me into a dark abyss I'm not sure I can extricate myself from.
The burner is hidden quietly in my coat pocket, but I know it will ring eventually.
When it does, I'll answer immediately and follow whatever instructions he gives me, because the alternative is watching everyone I love suffer the same fate as the man whose blood I scrubbed from an apartment floor tonight.
I gather the money from the table and hide it in my bedroom.
Tomorrow, I'll deposit some of it in my bank account and use the rest to buy groceries and pay bills.
But I'm not sure I'm going to sleep at all tonight.
I've crossed a line that can't be uncrossed, made choices that can't be unmade.
If that phone rings, I'll be forced to answer and respond.
It's the only way to keep my sister and her children safe.