Chapter 15 #2
“He’s presenting it as a rescue,” Anton said. “As though he’s saving the company. My father’s company. The company my father built from nothing while Kostya stood beside him and called himself family and —”
“Anton.”
“What.”
“We’re getting it back.”
Silence on the line. I heard the harbor through the phone—wind, water, the distant grind of a container crane.
“Today?” Anton asked.
“Today. This morning. Come to Dover Street first. Half an hour. I’ll call Arkady. We go in together.”
“Roman tried to hold the keys and they put him through a door. If they’ll do that to a man who refused—”
“They won’t get to keep it. We’re taking it back.”
I hung up. I set the phone on the nightstand. I looked at the dark ceiling.
Ksenia’s hand found my arm.
“I’m awake,” she said.
“I know.”
“What’s happened?”
I told her. The words came out flat. Right now there was only the information: Orlov Marine was occupied. Voronin gunmen sat in Mikhail’s office. Roman was at the hospital with a split lip. Kostya had sent a message claiming he was rescuing the company he had helped destroy.
She listened without interrupting. Her hand stayed on my arm. Her grip did not tighten.
“Papa’s office,” she said when I finished.
“Yes.”
“And Kostya sent the message twenty minutes before they took the building. He coordinated it. He’s not just compromised—he’s directing it.”
“That’s my assessment.”
“Daniil.”
“Yes.”
“Be careful at the loading bay. The east entrance has a blind spot—the corridor between the warehouse and the dock office. Papa had mirrors installed above the bend because the angle—”
She stopped herself. A half-smile crossed her face in the dark—the brief, involuntary recognition of a woman supplying tactical intelligence about her dead father’s building while her husband prepared to go to war in it.
“The mirrors may still be there,” she said. “Tell Arkady.”
“I’ll tell him.”
I stood up. I went to the dresser. I pulled on clothes. I reached for the holster in the bottom drawer and I strapped it on and I checked the magazine and I set the gun on the dresser.
Ksenia sat up in bed. The cartoon-cat pajamas. The loose hair. The amber light from the porch filtering through the curtain gap, catching her face.
“Are you bringing Arkady?”
“He’s coming here first. Anton too. We’ll leave together.”
“And me?”
“You’re leaving today. The flight is at—” I checked my phone. Sal had sent the details at one-fourteen a.m. I had not woken her to share them. “Two o’clock this afternoon. Ilya drives you to the airport. Boris and a second escort ride with you. Sal’s people meet the plane in Chicago.”
“Daniil.”
“Yes.”
“Come back.”
“I will.”
“Come back to me. Not to the house. Not to the office. To me. Come back to me and I’ll be waiting and we can—”
Her voice thinned. She pressed her lips together.
“I’ll call you when the building is secure,” I said. “I’ll call you from Anton’s office. I’ll call you from your father’s desk and I’ll tell you it’s done.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
She reached for me. I crossed the room. I bent down and she took my face in both hands—her palms warm now, warm from sleep, warm from the bed we had shared—and she held my face and she looked at me and I looked at her.
I kissed her forehead. Her temple. The spot below her ear.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you. Go get our building back.”
I picked up the gun from the dresser. I holstered it. I looked at her one more time—the pajamas, the loose hair, the face in the half-dark, the woman who had just given me her father’s building layout from memory because she loved me enough to trust me with it.
I went downstairs. I sent Arkady a text: Dover Street. Half an hour. Bring men.
I sent Nikita a text: Orlov Marine taken. Voronin gunmen. Kostya coordinated. Anton and Arkady coming here first.
Through the hall window, the November morning was still dark. The porch light burned. Boris stood at the corner, visible in the streetlight, his breath making small clouds.
I went into the kitchen and put the coffee on.
Iwas drinking my first cup when Anton’s car pulled up behind mine on Dover Street—a black sedan, its headlights sweeping across the houses. Arkady’s truck stopped behind it, the cab light on, Arkady’s silhouette visible behind the wheel. He was smoking. I could see the ember.
I stood at the kitchen table, looking at the photographs Anton had left there the previous morning. Five images of Ksenia going about her day. Face-down, exactly as he had placed them.
The doorbell rang at five-forty-eight.
I opened the door. Anton stood on the porch. His shirt was buttoned to the collar. He wore a dark coat over a dark jacket and his hands were bare and his knuckles were red from the cold.
Arkady stood behind him. His jacket hung open. His holster was visible. He did not conceal it.
They came in. I poured coffee for Anton. Arkady refused with a shake of his head.
“Talk,” I said.
Anton set his phone on the kitchen table. He opened the text from Kostya. I read it again—the careful language, the strategic framing, the presentation of a betrayal as a rescue.
“He’s put himself in the open,” Anton said. “He’s declared a position. He’s no longer hiding behind intermediaries or carefully worded denials. He sent me this message and signed his name to it.”
“That’s useful,” I said.
“Useful?”
“He’s told us exactly what he is. We don’t need to prove his treachery anymore—he’s announced it. Every captain in the Orlov organization now knows that Kostya has seized the waterfront by force and called it protection. He’s given us the moral authority to take it back.”
“Moral authority.” Anton’s mouth twisted. “Half my father’s captains will see this as strength. The other half will see me as the man who let his uncle take his building while he stood on a sidewalk.”
“Which is why we take it back together. Immediately. This morning. You and me and Arkady, side by side, at the gates of your father’s building. The story doesn’t spread as ‘Anton lost the waterfront.’ It spreads as ‘the alliance responded within hours.’”
Anton looked at me. His jaw worked.
“I spoke to Roman at the hospital,” he said. “He’s discharged. Split lip, bruised ribs, contusions on his back where they put him through the door. He’s angry. He wants to come.”
“He can come. He can stand behind us. He can be the first man through the gate after we clear it. But the first three men through that gate are you, me, and Arkady.”
Anton nodded. A single, deliberate nod.
“I’ll go with Arkady,” he said. “We’ll recover the building. You should take Ksenia to Chicago —”
“No.”
He stopped.
“Why shouldn’t you go with her?” Anton said.
“I think that if the Orlov headquarters is occupied by Voronin gunmen and the Sokolov Pakhan leaves the city the same day, the story writes itself. The alliance is decorative. The marriage is a shield. The new generation cannot defend what the old generation built. Every captain in both organizations hears that story. Every rival hears it. Viktor hears it and knows his strategy is working.”
“And if both of us go?”
“Then the story is different. The Sokolov Pakhan stands beside the Orlov Pakhan at the gates of Orlov Marine. The alliance is not decorative. It is load-bearing. It holds weight. It holds buildings.”
“And afterwards?” Anton asked. “Her flight isn’t until two. You could still take her to the airport.”
“Two is Viktor’s deadline. I want our captains at Beard Street before it expires. Yours and mine. They need to hear us refuse him together, in the building he thought he could take.”
“You want to stay until they’ve all committed.”
“Yes. Ilya and Boris will get her to the plane. I’m staying with you.”
I said it firmly. I had arranged for her protection. This was the part I needed to do myself.
Anton was quiet. He looked at his phone. At Kostya’s message. At his uncle’s name attached to a declaration of theft.
“Arkady,” I said.
My brother looked at me.
“I want this finished fast. In and out. No prolonged engagement, no siege, no negotiation. We go in, we remove the men, we secure the building, we stand Anton at the door and let his employees see him.”
“How many men inside?”
“Six to eight, based on Roman’s count.”
“Armed?”
“Roman said pistols. No rifles that he saw.”
Arkady’s jaw set. The particular configuration of a man who had been offered a problem he intended to solve quickly and violently.
“Eight men with pistols,” he said. “You and Anton and me. I’ll bring three of my own. Six of us in a building I’ve walked through a hundred times.”
“Boris stays with Ksenia,” I said. “Ilya too. You know the layout?”
“I’ve been to Orlov Marine. I know the loading bay, the warehouse floor, the east stairwell. The fire door sticks.”
“Ksenia told me about the blind spot by the dock office. There should be mirrors above the bend.”
Arkady’s eyebrows rose. A fraction.
“Your wife gave you the building layout.”
“My wife gave me her father’s building layout. From memory. At five in the morning.”
“Smart woman.”
“She really is. Strong, too.”
“She’d have to be. Married to you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” I grinned.
“It was.”
“Now. Let’s go take our building back.”