Chapter 12 #2
“No,” Daniil said. “Kostya is cautious. He questions the alliance because he’s protecting Orlov interests—that’s loyalty operating in the wrong direction, not treachery. But someone in his circle received that schedule and passed it on. Intentionally or through negligence, the result is the same.”
“Everyone on that list gets checked,” Anton said. It was not a question. “Even Kostya.”
“Agreed. Everyone,” Daniil confirmed. “But we investigate the individuals. Not the Orlov organization. Your captains are not suspects as a group. Six specific men received a specific document, and one of those six is the issue here.”
Anton looked at the list. I watched him read the names. I watched him arrive at the same recognition I had — these were not strangers. These were men who had mourned Mikhail Orlov.
“Roman Belov,” Anton said. “Fifteen years.”
“Fifteen years doesn’t exclude betrayal,” Nikita said.
His voice was gentle. The gentleness of a man who understood that what he was saying cost something.
“Fifteen years can also mean fifteen years of accumulated grievances. Or fifteen years of being in position to develop contacts outside the organization.”
Anton was quiet. Then he reached into his jacket and produced a key card. He placed it on the table in front of Nikita.
“Access to Orlov personnel and communication records,” Anton said. “Everything you need. Phone logs, financials, movement reports. My authority. No friction.”
The meeting ended. Nikita gathered his tablet and the printed list and the key card and left for wherever Nikita went when he had work to do—probably the car, probably already dialing. Anton walked us to the door.
He stopped me on the threshold. Held my arm.
“Be careful with this, Ksyusha. These names mean something to us. Don’t let that make you blind.”
I nodded. He was right.
My phone buzzed as we left Orlov Marine.
Zoe. Three messages, sent at 8:41, 9:02, and 9:14, each one escalating.
“Coffee. This week. Non-negotiable.”
“I’m hearing nothing from you and I’m staging an intervention.”
“Ksenia Orlova if you are dead I’m going to be so annoyed.”
I read them standing on the Beard Street sidewalk, the harbor wind pulling at Daniil’s oversized coat, and I smiled. The first real smile since the phone had rung in the dark.
I typed back: “Alive. Coffee. One hour.”
“OH SHE LIVES. Where?”
“You pick. Somewhere quiet.”
“The Glasshouse. Rear room. I’m already here.”
I pocketed the phone. Ilya stood by the car, the rear door open.
I climbed in and settled against the seat.
The leather was cold. My body registered the exhaustion I had been overriding since dawn—the heaviness in my limbs, the ache behind my eyes, the particular fuzziness that came from running on soup and adrenaline and four hours of interrupted sleep.
“The Glasshouse,” I told Ilya. “Van Brunt Street.”
Ilya closed my door. He did not pull away from the curb. He stood outside my window, and when I lowered it, his expression carried the particular discomfort of a man delivering news he knew would not be received well.
“Mrs. Sokolova. I’m sorry. My instructions are to take you home. Directly.”
I looked at him.
“Daniil’s instructions.”
“Yes, ma’am. Given this morning.”
I pulled out my phone. I dialed Daniil. He picked up on the second ring.
“Ilya says I’m going straight home.”
“You are.” His voice was measured. Tired. “You’ve had four hours of sleep. We were at the yard until seven. The meeting with Anton ran two hours. You need rest, and after what happened at Maspeth, I want you somewhere I know is secure.”
I understood the concern. I felt it—the genuine, bone-deep worry of a man who had stood in front of a burned loading shed at dawn and understood how easily the body count could have been fourteen instead of zero. The concern was real. The concern was not the problem.
“You cannot arrange my day without speaking to me.”
Silence on the line. Not long. Three seconds.
“I was trying to—”
“I know what you were trying to do. You were trying to protect me. And I’m willing to take additional protection—a second car, a guard at the café, whatever Ilya thinks is appropriate.
But I am going to have coffee with my friend.
You don’t get to decide that by giving Ilya instructions behind my back. ”
The silence again. Longer this time. I could hear the background noise on his end — engine noise, Arkady’s voice, the particular ambient sound of men working through a crisis.
I waited. I did not fill the silence. I did not soften. I did not add qualifications or concessions or the polite retractions that would have made the challenge easier to absorb. I let the silence hold my position for me.
“You’re right,” he said.
Two words. Spoken quietly.
“I should have called you. I should have asked. I was—the fire. The men. I keep thinking about how easily—” He stopped. “That’s not an excuse. I should have asked.”
“Will you change Ilya’s instruction?”
“Already done. I’m texting him now.” A pause. “Take a second car. Boris will follow. And Ksyusha—please eat something. Real food. Not just coffee.”
“I’ll eat something.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise, Daddy.”
The word landed differently over the phone. Softer. A deliberate reminder that the authority he held was the authority I had given him, and that I was choosing to acknowledge it even while I corrected how he used it.
“Thank you,” he said. “For telling me when I’m wrong.”
“Get used to it.”
I heard something on his end. A breath that might have been a laugh.
I hung up. I lowered the window.
“Ilya. The Glasshouse, Van Brunt Street. Boris follows.”
Ilya looked at his phone, read whatever Daniil had sent, and nodded. He closed the window. The car pulled away from the curb.
Zoe had taken the table in the rear room.
The same table where Daniil and I had sat the previous week.
The ivy climbed the back window. The light was soft.
Zoe’s enormous tote bag occupied the chair beside her, and she had already ordered two coffees and a plate of something that turned out to be lemon cake.
She stood when she saw me. She hugged me hard enough that I felt the tote bag shift against my hip.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Well thank you so much, I’m so glad I agreed to meet!”
“No, I mean—you look like you haven’t slept. You look like you’ve been through something. Sit down. Drink this.”
I sat. I drank. The coffee was good. The lemon cake was better. Zoe watched me eat two pieces before she said anything else.
“The project on Henry Street fell through,” she said. “The client decided he wanted a ‘modern aesthetic,’ which means he wanted white walls and recessed lighting and he came to an architectural designer for that. I referred him to a contractor who will give him exactly what he deserves.”
“That’s depressing.”
“That’s the industry. What about you? I haven’t heard from you in—what, four days? Five? I was starting to think your terrifying husband had locked you in a tower.”
“He hasn’t locked me in a tower.”
More like a sex dungeon.
“Good. That would have been a lot of paperwork.” She paused. Stirred her coffee. “How are you, though? Actually?”
I set down my cup. The question was genuine, and Zoe’s particular talent was asking genuine questions in a way that made them impossible to deflect.
“Tired. There was a fire last night. At the yard—the Sokolov freight yard in Queens. Someone torched it.”
Zoe’s eyes widened. “Was anyone—”
“Everyone got out. A dispatcher pulled the alarm. Fourteen men. Minor injuries.”
“Jesus, Ksenia.”
“We spent the morning at the yard. Then a meeting at my brother’s office. Then I called my husband because he told my driver to take me home without asking me, and I told him he couldn’t do that, and he agreed.”
Zoe was quiet for a moment. Her fingers traced the rim of her cup.
“Okay,” she said. “That’s—okay. That’s good. He listened.”
“He did.”
“But he still did it first.”
“He did.”
Zoe nodded. She did not push further.
“What’s it actually like?” Zoe asked. “Living with him. Not the Bratva stuff. Not the security. Just—day to day. What’s it like?”
I opened my mouth. I closed it. I opened it again.
“He made origami plants with me,” I said. “He’s terrible at it.”
Zoe’s mouth twitched.
“And he took me to dinner. A proper date. He’s—he’s kind of . . . sweet.”
“Sweet? He’s a Bratva Pakhan.”
“He’s sweet.”
“That’s insane.”
“He asked me about the bathhouse,” I said. “What I’d do with it if it were mine.”
“No . . . murder?”
I laughed.
“No murder.”
“Extortion?”
“Not so far. Not of me.”
Zoe stared at me.
“We planned a dinner,” I said. “A family dinner. At Dover Street. All normal stuff.”
Zoe rested her chin on her hand. The amusement had left her face.
“Ksenia,” she said.
“What?”
“Do you love him?”
The question arrived without preparation. No lead-in, no careful framing.
I picked up my cold coffee. I put it down.
“It would be premature to call it that,” I said.
“We married because of the alliance. Because my father and his father were killed and the organizations needed to be held together. The circumstances are—they’re not ordinary.
Everything has happened quickly. The intensity of the situation—the danger, the investigation, the proximity—it accelerates things.
Feelings that would normally develop over months are developing over days because we’re living through a crisis together.
That’s not love. That’s adrenaline and proximity and shared trauma and the particular bonding that happens when two people are under extraordinary pressure. ”
I paused. I had more. I could feel the explanation continuing, building, each clause a brick in a wall I was constructing between myself and the question.
“And the DDlg dynamic complicates it further. The structure he provides, the care it creates dependency that mimics emotional attachment. I need to be careful not to confuse the relief of being cared for with the deeper—”
“Ksenia.”