Chapter 27 Roman
Roman
“Leave the weapon,” I murmur before we get out of the car.
“It’s a five-minute walk, maybe seven with commuters.
Keep up.” I open the door and get out before moving around and opening Zoya’s door.
She is stuffing the gun into the side pocket, and I nod in acknowledgement.
I take her hand and fold it into the crook of my arm, body angled to screen her face from the street.
I clock reflections in shop windows, the timing of the lights, the pause of a courier at the corner.
“Eyes forward,” I murmur. “We’re a couple running an errand.”
She matches my pace.
The bank sits bland and anonymous behind glass and brushed steel. A security guard by the door, late fifties, paunch beneath the blazer, wedding band. He scans without really seeing. Inside, the queue snakes past a row of leaflets. Mortgage. Savings. Lies.
I nod to the receptionist. “Safe deposit access.”
She nods and calls for a manager.
She is a neat woman with cropped hair and a professional smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Box number?” she asks.
“Twenty-three,” I say, then tip my chin to Zoya.
Zoya produces the key from her coat pocket and places it on the counter like she’s laying a chip. “Identification?” the woman says.
Zoya slides her passport over. I let the silence sit. Authority fills it.
The manager types. A slight frown, then a nod. “Miss Antonova, you’re authorised.” She lifts a second key from a drawer as Zoya casually picks hers up. “If you’ll follow me.”
We pass rows of identical doors and then into one marked Private. The manager stops at a column marked A–D and slots her key in. Zoya fits hers beside it. Twin turns. The mechanism releases with a clean click. The woman draws the slim metal drawer out and sets it on a trolley.
“If you need anything, please shout.” She leaves. The door clicks shut quietly.
Privacy.
Zoya exhales. She reaches for the box. I catch her wrist.
“We open, we take, we leave. No lingering. If there’s anything volatile, we reseal. Understood?”
“Yes.”
I lift the lid before she can.
Inside is a black Moleskine, a sealed envelope with N.A. scrawled across the front, a USB in a foam cut-out, and a thinner key taped to the side—twenty-four is engraved on the bow. As expected. Matryoshka.
“Take the book,” I say. Zoya lifts it, careful. I slit the envelope with a blade and fan the papers over the table. Bank statements. Wire instructions. “He was planning a hit.”
“On Dad? Was it Nik who killed him? Is there proof?”
“Proof enough. Dark web messages.”
“That fucker,” she spits out. “I’m going to—”
“You’re not going to do anything, Zoya.” I catch her wrist tighter as she surges forward. “No,” I repeat, quiet enough to cut. “We bag it and go.”
She swallows, nods once. I slide the USB into my inner pocket, fold the wires into the Moleskine, and palm the next key. Twenty-four. I tear it free, tape scraping under my thumb, and hand Zoya the envelope marked N.A.
“Put it away,” I say.
She stares at it and slips it into her coat. “No idea whose box this is, but we will find out.”
Nodding, I drop the empty tray back into the slot, lid on, nothing to see here when the manager checks later. I open the door, hold it, and we stroll past the rows of boxes like we have no care in the world.
The manager appears from nowhere with that bank smile. “Everything in order?”
“Yes,” I answer for us both. “Thank you.”
Street air hits damp and sour. Commuters move like shoals. I angle my body to cover Zoya as we merge, eyes skimming glass, licence plates, the thread of a man too casual by the bus stop.
“Left,” I murmur.
We cut down a side street heavy with delivery vans. I pull my phone out and tap a single digit. “Rotate,” I say when Yuri answers, and end the call. The decoys move. That’s the point of ghosts—you only see them when you try to touch them.
Zoya’s breath is even. She’s wired tight, but she keeps pace.
I take us into a coffee shop and out the fire exit with the staff door propped open, then past clothing stores and restaurants.
The driver creeps into view at the far end and pops the locks.
We slip inside, doors shut, and the car rolls before our weight settles into the seats.
“Tail?” the driver asks.
“Lost,” I say. “South route.”
He threads us through Pimlico. Zoya presses her hand over her coat where the envelope rests. “Let me see the messages.”
“In the house,” I warn. “Not in a moving target box with a pane of glass between you and a bullet.”
Her mouth flattens. “What did he plan?”
“Your father first,” I say, because that’s what Nik wanted on paper, and I let the rest sit. “Then you on a shorter fuse if he failed. He wanted control before Moscow sniffed weakness.”
She stares at the rain-scored window, jaw set so hard I can hear her teeth protest. “He did this. He will pay.”
I lace my fingers through hers and squeeze once. “He will.”
The rest of the drive is a study in restraint. I text Yuri a fifteen-minute stagger to bring the decoys home on different routes. We slide through the gates. The estate swallows us.
“Office,” I say. She moves with purpose, coat still buttoned, jaw carved from stone.
I set the Moleskine, the USB, and the wires out on the desk in a neat grid. Zoya drops the envelope marked N.A. beside them and takes the chair like a queen claiming a throne she didn’t want but will never relinquish. I slot the USB into a secure laptop that never touches the outside world.
The screen fills with text dumps—transfers through layered shells, message headers from throwaway markets, a chain of intermediaries with the same stink of cheap bravado.
I open the top folder. Payment authorisations.
Dates. Amounts that add to motive. A second folder—comms with an Albanian broker.
A third—timestamped photos of a golf course car park, a club pro noted in the margin as “co-operative,” routes marked with red Xs.
Zoya reads like she’s injecting the words into her veins. Her breath shortens. “If Daddy had all of this, why didn’t he act?”
I grimace and meet her gaze. She is full of righteous fury, and it kicks me in the chest. I take a deep breath and say it. “Zoya. There is something you need to know. Your father isn’t dead.”
For a heartbeat, there is no sound. Then the room breathes, and she does not.
But I know I just made the right choice for her. For us. The rest of it is just noise.
Her eyes go flat, then wild, then something in between that hurts to look at. She rises so fast the chair skids back and kisses the rug. “Say that again.”
“Your father is alive.” I hold her gaze. “He called me at lunch time on a burner phone he had delivered. He is under orders. The funeral goes ahead. Your grief has to be real.”
“Orders from who?” she grits out.
I point upwards and shrug.
She gets it. She grew up in this world. No one says it out loud. No one talks about it.
Her hand trembles midair like she’s deciding whether to slap me. She doesn’t. She steps back, her breath hitching like a broken metronome.
“He called you at lunchtime? Today?”
“Yes. Today.”
“I saw his dead body… at the morgue…”
“I don’t know what to say. It was him on the phone.”
Her pain is like a knife to my heart. But this was the right thing to do. “I needed to tell you. I couldn’t let you go on thinking he was dead.”
“I don’t know whether to thank you or kick you.”
“Let’s start with not kicking me just yet. Whatever is going down, Mikhail didn’t call Nik out on this because it needed to happen. For whatever reason.”
“What else? This box was set up long before these recent transactions. It was at the old bank, remember? There has to be something else, something from years ago. What is it?”
“We’ll dig.”
She snaps her fingers at me, and I snort. “Yes, ma’am.”
She softens slightly. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to order you about. I’m in shock, and I’m angry, and I will kill Daddy next time I see him.”
I fix her with a gaze, and she stares back at me. “What?” she says quietly.
“I don’t think you will see him again, Zoya.”
Tears prick her eyes, and she nods, accepting it as truth. “So he’s gone anyway. He wanted my grief to be real? Well, here you go.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and then avert my gaze so she can grieve for the second time in peace.