ROMAN
They find Oleg’s body just after dawn.
A harbor patrol drags him up half a mile downriver, caught against a line of rotting pilings like garbage the tide got tired of carrying.
By the time Mikhail gets the call, I’m already awake, sitting in the safe apartment kitchen with coffee I haven’t touched and a headache that started somewhere behind my eyes and never left.
He comes in, shuts the door behind him, and says, “They found him.”
That’s all. He doesn’t need to say who.
I look up at him. “Alive?”
He gives me a look. “No.”
For a second I just sit there staring at the grain of the table under my hands. Then I push the chair back and stand.
Something in me has been holding itself together on the ugly little hope that maybe Oleg survived the water long enough to be dragged out somewhere else.
Maybe he would wash up half-dead, lungs ruined, useful for one more hour if I found him first. Maybe I still had time to force the name out of him.
I didn’t.
The old bastard is dead.
And with him goes the one man I had finally cornered after five years of false starts, dead leads, men who swore they hadn’t seen him and meant it because they’d only seen what he wanted them to see.
Mikhail puts the report on the table between us.
I don’t pick it up.
Then I laugh once, under my breath. There’s no humor in it. Just disgust.
Of course, Oleg would die exactly like that. Slipping away half-broken, still useless at the end, still finding a way to leave me with blood and fragments instead of anything I can actually use.
I walk to the window because if I stay standing still in the middle of the kitchen, I’m going to start breaking things.
The city outside is gray and flat under the morning weather. Trucks. Taxis. Men walking dogs they maybe don’t particularly like. It all looks normal from up here, which only makes me angrier.
Mikhail stays behind me for a moment, then says, “He gave you something.”
I turn my head enough to look at him. “Not enough,” I say.
“No.”
That’s the problem.
I spend the rest of my day in a bad mood, and then the next couple of days after that.
One morning, Mikhail and I are retracing Oleg’s last days.
Turns out he had resurfaced in the city just the week before we found him, there was chatter but not much.
Oleg was nobody of consequence, which is why I chose him in the first place.
My father had discarded him, and he had used me to get back at him.
I see it so clearly now. I only wish revenge had not blinded me.
Then my phone lights up with Vika’s contact.
Mikhail glances at the screen. “Work?”
“No.”
“Woman?”
I don’t answer.
“That’s a yes.”
I pick up the phone.
Lunch today? You were much more fun in person.
A second message comes in right after.
Come by the house. Papa’s out, Irina’s busy, and Katya is impossible today.
It’s been days since lunch and I still haven’t stopped thinking about Katerina. The pier. Her face when I said I knew the truth. The way she didn’t answer. The way she looked at me like she wanted to hit me and kiss me at the same time.
“I’m going.”
Mikhail looks up from his notes. “Now?”
“Yes.”
He checks the time on his watch. “You’re just leaving?”
I take my coat from the back of the chair. “That’s usually how it works.”
He watches me button it. “And what exactly are you hoping to get out of this?”
“Depends on who talks first.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“No,” I say. “It doesn’t.”
Mikhail leans back in his chair, studying me in that calm way of his that makes it obvious he already knows more than he’s saying.
Then he asks, “Do you want me to send anyone with you?”
I think about it for half a second. “No.”
“That’s a bad idea.”
“Probably.”
“And you’re doing it anyway.”
“Yes.”
He gives me a look that says he has reached the stage of our professional relationship where disappointment must be rationed.
And with that, I take my exit.
The drive to the Markov house really gets on my nerves for some reason.
I don’t like going into situations where I already know I’m not thinking clearly. Katerina does that to me. Always has. The problem is, I only ever admit it to myself when I’m already on the way.
The gates open before my car fully stops.
Which means I was expected.
One of Sergei’s men comes down the steps as I get out, and gives me a deep nod.
“Mr. Sokolov,” he says. “Miss Viktoria is waiting inside.”
Of course, she is.
A maid lets me in, flustered enough to be obvious about it, and leads me through the front hall toward the sitting room at the back of the house.
The place looks exactly the way houses like this always do.
Quiet money, old wood, too much taste in some rooms and not enough in others.
The kind of house built to impress men and discipline women.
I hear Vika before I see her.
Then she appears in the doorway in cream silk and satisfaction, smiling as if I’ve just done her a personal favor.
“Roman.”
She comes straight toward me and throws her arms around me before I can stop her.
I catch her automatically, because letting a woman fall flat on polished stone would create a different kind of problem, but I don’t hug her back. I barely have time to register the perfume before I’m already looking past her.
Katerina is standing across the room near the window.
And the look on her face is worth the drive.
Priceless, really.
If she could have set Vika on fire with a glance, I’d have had to explain scorch marks to the staff.
Vika leans back just enough to smile up at me. “You came.”
“Yes.”
“I was starting to think you were all cold messages and good timing.”
“That sounds like a compliment.”
“It is.”
I let go of her and look past her, directly at Katerina. She straightens at once.
“Katerina,” I say.
She says, “Roman,” in a tone that suggests my name is a problem she had hoped to postpone until tomorrow.
I look between them once and ask, “Am I interrupting?”
“Yes,” Katerina says.
“No,” Vika says at the same time.
I raise a brow.
Vika laughs. “Ignore her. She’s been in a mood all afternoon.”
“I wonder why,” Katerina says.
The housemaid nearest the staircase chooses that moment to vanish with impressive instinct. Good woman.
Vika reaches for my sleeve. “Come in. We were just having coffee.”
“We were not,” Katerina says.
I look at her. “Then this is already better than lunch.”
That almost gets me a reaction. Almost.
Instead, she folds her arms and says, “You do enjoy making an entrance.”
“No,” I say. “I enjoy the truth. The entrance is just logistics.”
Vika smiles as if I’ve said something charming. Katerina looks like she would prefer to throw a lamp at my head.
Vika steps back just enough to look up at me. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“I said I would.”
“Yes,” she says, pleased. “But men say things.”
Across the room, Katerina says, “And women apparently throw themselves at guests before they’ve even taken off their coats.”
Vika turns her head, still smiling. “You could at least try not to sound jealous.”
Katerina gives her a flat look. “You could at least try not to look ridiculous.”
The lunch left too much hanging in the air. This is better. Easier, somehow. Katerina annoyed is easier to deal with than Katerina quiet.
I take off my coat and hand it to the maid, still looking at her.
Katerina notices that too.
“Was this your idea?” she asks me.
“No,” I say.
That answer throws her off for half a second.
Then her eyes narrow again. “But you came anyway.”
“Yes.”
Vika drifts back to my side as if she belongs there, which she doesn’t, and says, “Honestly, Katya, must everything become a problem when you’re in the room?”
Katerina folds her arms. “Only the stupid things.”
The maid appears with drinks. No one takes one except Vika, who accepts hers as though she’s hosting. She probably thinks she is.
I glance around the room once.
“Kostin’s in town,” Vika says. “I thought you’d be trapped with him.”
“He’ll survive.”
She laughs as if that’s charming.
Katerina is still watching me, and there’s too much in it for a simple greeting. Suspicion. Annoyance. Curiosity. Something left over from the corridor and the pier and every unfinished second since Moscow.
It makes the whole room feel smaller.
Vika says something else, but I barely hear it. Katerina shifts her weight near the window, the late afternoon light catching in her hair, and I think again that I’ve had days to stop thinking about her and have failed at it completely.
Then she says, very dryly, “Well. Since you’re here, I assume someone should pretend to be pleased.”
And just like that, I know this is going to be a long afternoon.
Katerina leaves five minutes after I get there.
She does it neatly, almost politely. One cool look at me, one flat answer to something Vika says, then she turns to the maid and says she has to check on the children.
I watch her go.
Instead, I sit there while Vika keeps talking and feel disappointment settle into me hard enough to be irritating. Not because she left the room. Because I know she left because I’m in it.
Vika keeps going.
About some charity dinner, some woman she hates, some designer she thinks copied a dress from Paris. She talks the way some people drink, steadily and for longer than anyone around them wants.
I answer when I have to. But mostly I don’t.
The whole time, I’m listening for footsteps that don’t come back.
Then Vika’s phone rings.
She glances at the screen and makes a face. “If this is my mother, tell her I died beautifully.”
I don’t answer.
She stands anyway, already swiping to accept the call, and drifts toward the hall with one hand over the receiver, still talking before the line properly connects.
The second she’s gone, I get up.
The house is too quiet in that expensive way old houses are. Thick carpets. Closed doors. Voices softened by distance and wood and too much money. I walk without hurrying, because men who belong in houses like this never hurry unless someone is bleeding.
Then I hear the piano. Soft at first. A few notes, then the line of a melody I know too well.