ROMAN
I hear my own words again the moment I step back into the ballroom, and for once they do not satisfy me.
Katerina’s voice follows them anyway.
I know who you really are.
I keep walking because stopping would have been worse. Stopping would have meant giving her the reaction she earned and I don’t want to give that in public. But by the time the doors close behind me, my heart is hitting far too hard against my ribs for a man whose face is meant to show nothing.
There is no way she should know.
Most of the room knows me as Roman Sokolov. Some know more, but only in pieces. A bastard son from the wrong branch of the wrong story. A man who came back rich enough to force people to remember him. Very few know the whole shape of it. Fewer still would speak it aloud.
So how does she?
I move through the room on instinct, nodding where I have to, letting the right people think I’m listening while my mind turns over the same possibility from different angles.
She heard something in Moscow. At the club.
That’s the only explanation that makes sense. She must have gone upstairs. She must have heard enough of Oleg’s conversation to understand that Roman Sokolov was not only Roman Sokolov.
Enough to make her run.
It fits too well.
And if it’s true, then for four years I have hated her for vanishing while never once understanding what she thought she was escaping.
Someone says my name. I turn automatically, answer something bland to an old customs man from Brighton, and keep moving.
I do not trust myself to stop near Sergei Markov’s table again yet.
If I look at Katerina now, I may drag answers out of her in the middle of the ballroom, and as satisfying as that might be for a few seconds, it would be catastrophic by the end of the night.
Mikhail reaches me before I reach a decision. “We need to go,” he says quietly.
I look at him. “Now?”
“Yes.”
That one word is enough to clear the rest of the room out of my head.
“What happened?”
“Pier Nine.”
My body stills.
Pier Nine is not one of the obvious places. That’s why it matters. It’s one of our smaller river properties on the Jersey side, dressed as a refrigerated import terminal. Mostly legitimate on paper. Useful because of what can pass through it when customs decides to be cooperative.
“Talk.”
Mikhail steps half a pace closer. “One of the night supervisors called in a gas leak ten minutes ago. Fire crews got there and found no leak, but half the cameras were looped and one cold-storage unit had been opened from the inside. Three men are down.”
“Dead?”
“One dead on site. Two breathing when the call came.”
“And?”
He keeps his voice flat. “There was a container in Bay Fourteen that wasn’t supposed to exist.”
Only six people knew about Bay Fourteen.
One is standing in front of me.
Two are dead.
Which leaves three men I may soon be burying.
“What was in it?” I ask.
Mikhail’s mouth tightens. “Documents. Drives. The old Moscow accounts.”
Not money then. History.
The kind that gets men killed long after they think they have outlived their sins.
“Who got in?”
“We don’t know yet. Whoever did it had our timing, the emergency override, and the patrol gaps.”
Oleg again, maybe, even if his hand is not directly on it. That bastard leaked enough over the years to let half the city kill itself over scraps.
I glance once toward the Markovs’ table.
Katerina is not there.
Good. Or bad. I cannot decide quickly enough to matter.
Mikhail follows my gaze and says nothing.
“Get the cars,” I tell him.
“They’re already outside.”
I pass two council men on my way to the front and give them a nod cold enough to signal business, not insult. One of the Volkovs starts toward me, then thinks better of it. The hostess appears in my path as if to ask whether I’m leaving so soon, sees my face, and steps aside without a word.
Near the side of the ballroom, I catch Sergei Markov watching me.
He knows something is wrong. He may not know what, but men like him can smell urgency the way dogs smell blood.
I do not slow.
If he wants to read meaning into my departure, let him work for it.
I’m almost at the doors when a small figure collides with my leg.
I look down, and my heart squeezes. It’s Katerina’s kid. Lev’s kid too, if Mikhail is right. She looks like Katerina but also like Andrei Morozov. I hate that, but I can’t hate her.
She’s in white tights and shiny shoes, hair half-falling out of whatever elegant arrangement someone forced it into.
She has apparently escaped her grandmother, her mother, and every person in this room with common sense.
She wraps both arms around my thigh as if she has known me long enough to do it without hesitation.
I stare at her.
For one second, the urgency fractures.
“What’s your name, little one?”
“Sofia,” she says. “Sofia Markova.”
She tips her face up at me. “You’re leaving.”
It’s accusation, not question.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Work.”
She narrows her eyes with immediate suspicion. “At night?”
“Yes.”
“That’s rude.”
I almost smile.
“Sometimes work is rude.”
She considers this with grave offense, then asks, “Are you coming back?” The question hits somewhere unprotected.
I crouch before I think better of it. Mikhail makes a small sound under his breath behind me, but I ignore him.
Sofia studies me as if she expects a real answer and will know if I lie.
“Yes,” I say.
“When?”
“Soon.”
“That means grown-up nonsense.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
She brightens, pleased with herself. “See? I knew.”
Then she leans in and lowers her voice as if sharing a great secret. “Mama is in a bad mood.”
My throat tightens around something dangerously close to tenderness.
“I noticed.”
“She gets that face when she wants to throw something.”
“That sounds difficult.”
“It is.” Sofia pats my shoulder with solemn sympathy. “You should be careful.”
Mikhail looks away. He’s either pretending not to hear or hiding amusement. With him, it can be both.
I ask, “And what about you?”
She straightens proudly. “I’m never difficult.”
From across the room, Katerina’s voice cuts through the music. “Sofia.”
The child winces. Then she whispers to me, “That’s the face.”
I should stand. I should leave. Men are bleeding at Pier Nine, and every second I spend crouched in a ballroom speaking to an almost four-year-old with her mother’s mouth is a second I may regret later.
Instead, I say, “Go back to your grandmother.”
“I like you better.”
The simple honesty of it nearly undoes me.
I smooth one hand over her hair before I can stop myself. “Go.”
She finally lets go of me and runs off, one shoe nearly slipping on the polished floor before she regains balance. Halfway back, she turns and waves.
I raise two fingers in return.
Then I stand.
When I look up, Katerina is there at the edge of the room, one hand closing around Sofia’s shoulder, her face unreadable from this distance except for the fact that she saw every second of that.
Good. Let her.
Or no. Maybe it’s not good. Really, nothing about any of this is good.
Mikhail opens the outer door, and cold air cuts in from the street.
As I step through it, my mind is already splitting itself in two directions.
Pier Nine.
And Katerina’s voice in the corridor.
The city night closes around us, black cars waiting at the curb, men already moving before I give the order.
I get into the car and say, “Call the hospital first. Then the terminal. And lock down Bay Fourteen before the fire department remembers how to ask questions.”
Mikhail nods and starts making calls.
By the time I get there, the fire crews are being held at the outer gate by men with badges they did not earn and uniforms they borrowed from one of our contractors.
The ambulances are real. The panic is real too.
That’s the problem with operations like this.
When something goes wrong, you have to separate useful fear from waste quickly or the whole night rots.
The terminal yard is lit too brightly, cold white floodlights reflecting off wet pavement and steel containers stacked three high.
One refrigeration unit stands open near Bay Fourteen, its metal doors wide, mist curling out into the air like breath from a wounded animal.
Two men are on stretchers near the loading ramp.
One is conscious and crying. The other has gone so pale I know before anyone tells me he will not make it.
Mikhail falls into step beside me. “Fire crews found the override box cut,” he says. “Not hacked. Opened manually.”
“Inside man.”
“Yes.”
“Who was on shift?”
Mikhail gives me four names.
I know three. The fourth is new.
“Bring me the new one first.”
Mikhail signals to two men near the loading dock. They disappear into the terminal office.
I keep walking.
There’s a body near the side entrance covered with a thermal blanket.
One of ours. I do not ask his name yet. There’s time for that when the more urgent work is done.
Men always think ruthlessness looks like indifference to the dead.
It doesn’t. Indifference is lazy. Ruthlessness is order.
You deal with the living first because they can still make the dead matter.
A foreman hurries toward me, wringing his hands, face gray with terror.
“Mr. Sokolov, I swear to God, I never saw him near the cold unit before tonight. He said dispatch moved him from Jersey City.”
I look at him.
He stops talking.
“Name.”
“Luis.”
“No,” I say. “Yours.”
“Anton.”
“Anton, if you speak again before I ask you a question, I will assume you’re trying to hide something and adjust my mood accordingly.”
He nods so hard I think his neck might snap.
“Good,” I say. “Now tell me exactly who had access to Bay Fourteen.”
This takes twelve minutes.
By the end of it, Anton is shaking badly enough that one of my men has to hand him water. He’s useless but not lying. Good enough.
The new man is dragged in through the side office door.