ROMAN #2
He’s younger than I expected. Twenty-five, maybe. Cheap beard. Expensive sneakers. Blood on his mouth from resisting the men who brought him. He looks at the floodlit yard, at me, at the body under the thermal blanket, and makes the mistake of trying to be defiant.
“I didn’t do anything.”
I hit him before the sentence is fully out.
He goes down to one knee, coughing blood onto the concrete.
Mikhail says nothing. The men around us say nothing. The fire crews pretend not to see.
I crouch in front of him.
“You had one job tonight,” I say. “Stand near a gate, look stupid, and let me go home without learning your name.”
He tries to straighten. “I was told—”
I hit him again. This time he falls.
I take his phone from his jacket pocket while he’s still trying to remember where the pavement is. Locked. Cheap. Burner.
I hand the phone to Mikhail. “Open it.”
The man on the ground spits blood and says, “You can’t touch me.”
I look down at him. Then at the body under the blanket. Then back at him.
“You have misunderstood me greatly.”
He stops breathing for a second.
We take him inside.
The office above the yard is glass on three sides and freezing because one of the windows blew during the attack. There’s blood on the floor from someone else. No one has cleaned it yet, which is fine for now. Fear sharpens memory.
We sit him in a chair.
I remain standing.
It takes seven minutes to break him.
Not because I enjoy it, though men like him always assume that’s why this happens.
It’s because there is no point drawing out the performance once the answer is already weakening in front of you.
I ask the questions in the order that matters.
Name of contact. Number used. How payment moved.
What he was told was in Bay Fourteen. Who else knew the patrol gaps.
He lies twice.
The first lie costs him two teeth.
The second costs him the kneecap.
He folds forward in the chair, both hands clutching at his leg, sweat breaking across his face so fast it almost looks like fever.
I wait.
Mikhail stands near the door with the burner phone in one hand, watching without expression.
Two of my men remain behind the chair, not touching the boy unless I tell them to.
The office smells like cold metal, blood, and fear.
The broken window lets river air push through the room in little vicious bursts.
When the screaming weakens enough for words, I crouch in front of him.
“Now,” I say, “we try honesty again.”
He shakes his head frantically. “I told you what I know. I swear to God—”
I press two fingers into the shattered kneecap.
He nearly vomits.
“Do not bring God into a conversation you’re losing this badly.”
He gasps and grabs at the arms of the chair. Tears have started now.
“What was in Bay Fourteen?”
He shakes his head hard, eyes squeezed shut. “I told you, I don’t know.”
I put two fingers against the broken knee and press.
He chokes on the scream.
“You knew enough to open the right container. Ask yourself if you want to keep pretending.”
“Records,” he gasps. “Drives, papers, old records, that’s all I know.”
“Who told you to take them?”
He hesitates.
Mikhail steps forward and sets the pliers on the desk beside me.
The man hears the metal hit wood and starts shaking harder.
“Yegor,” he blurts out. “Yegor Melnik.”
That gets my attention.
“Who does Yegor work for?”
“I don’t know.”
I pick up the pliers.
“I swear,” he says quickly. “I don’t know who pays him now. He just said the old man wanted his papers back.”
I stop.
The room goes quiet.
Mikhail looks at me. I look at him. Neither of us says anything for a second.
I set the pliers down. “What exactly did he say?”
The man is crying now, trying to talk through it. “He said the old man built those routes before your boss ever touched them. He said he wants back what belongs to him.”
I stand up slowly. “Did he say anything else?”
The man swallows blood and nods. “He said the old man was done waiting. Said the bastard had been spending his legacy long enough.”
This time I don’t bother hiding my reaction.
Bastard.
Mikhail says, “Could be a bluff.”
“Maybe.”
But I already know I don’t believe that.
I walk to the broken window and look out over the terminal yard. Floodlights. Wet concrete. Men moving bodies, scrubbing blood, locking down gates. Bay Fourteen open and stripped. Not cleaned out for profit.
This wasn’t a raid for money.
It was a message.
Whoever sent Yegor knew what was in that container, knew what it meant, and knew exactly when to hit it. During the gathering. While I was occupied. While my attention was somewhere else.
Mikhail comes up beside me. “You think he’s here.”
I don’t answer right away.
My father built some of these routes before I had money, men, or a name I could use. He knows how they work. He knows which ones still matter. If someone reached for Bay Fourteen, they either learned from him or got the order from him.
And then there’s the timing.
I stay where I am for a moment, looking out through the broken window at the terminal yard below.
The floodlights make everything look flatter than it is.
The blood near Bay Fourteen has already been washed back to a pink sheen on the concrete.
One of the refrigeration units is being resealed.
Men are working fast because they know I’m watching, and because the dead man already loaded into the ambulance has reminded everyone how quickly tonight could have gone worse.
It still might.
I call Anton at customs.
He answers too quickly. He’s nervous.
“Tell me about private dock arrivals in the last three days.”
He starts talking immediately, shuffling papers, trying too hard to sound useful. I let him ramble for five seconds, then cut in.
“Relevant arrivals, Anton.”
A pause.
Then he says, “One launch came in through Jersey forty-eight hours ago. No passenger list. Cleared through an old monastery permit.”
That does it.
“Who signed it?”
“No formal signature. It was pushed through as a favor.”
“By who?”
Another pause. “Savchenko.”
I look back at Bay Fourteen.
One of those men who retired three times and never really left. If he’s doing favors again, it means someone made him useful again.
I look out over the yard one last time and know, with a certainty that leaves no room for hope, that whatever has been circling in the dark all these years has finally decided to step into the light.
And once my father does that, peace is over.
War is only a matter of timing.