Chapter 11 - Misha #2
“Are we going to address the fact that he’s here,” Sera said lightly, though her eyes remained sharp, “or are we pretending it is completely normal for all of us to be present inside Kliment Romanov’s safehouse?”
“I have been here since the day at the warehouse, and when I asked Kliment if I could invite you guys out here, he was kind enough to let me,” I said simply, quickly establishing the grounds. Respecting me meant respecting Kliment, even if they looked at him like an enemy.
“I could not have guessed that,” Diane replied, boring holes into Kliment.
Sera’s gaze flicked back to Kliment. “This is concerning, Misha. He is an enemy of your family. Are we sure this isn’t a trap?”
I was surprised when, despite being able to hear everything, Kliment did not react and did not rise to it at all.
He remained resolute in his position, allowing me to handle the entire conversation however I wanted to.
It almost felt as if he respected my authority, and that was a strange feeling. No one had ever done that before.
“Do you girls trust me?” I asked, my voice beginning to get firm. It was one thing to be friendly with my team, but it was completely different to establish authority, and I knew exactly how to do that.
The room went very still, but all of them nodded.
“We do,” Alina replied.
“Then you should know I have immense faith in this man and everything he represents. I would not be risking my life and your lives in such a stupid manner, obviously. On that day in the warehouse, when the gun was on my forehead and I was moments away from death, it was Kliment who saved and rescued me and brought me here. He is the one who is allowing me to stay here until I heal, and he knows all about our operations.”
Sera’s expression sharpened, and they all looked at one another, as if registering the information.
“Are you alright now?” Diane asked.
“Much better,” I nodded. “But we don’t have time for any of this right now. We have wasted enough time because of my absence and injury, and we have already missed out on key information we could have gotten from Elias Vance. We need to get back in the game and gather intel to strike further.”
That was enough. All of them nodded, and the shift was immediate.
Laptops came out, and files spread across the table.
The air changed from tension to focus so quickly that it was almost physical.
This was where we worked best. Not in conversation but in execution.
Within an hour, the room transformed completely.
Maps covered the main table with shipping routes marked in overlapping lines.
Codes were written, crossed out, and rewritten.
Diane sat across from me, fingers moving quickly over her laptop.
“I pulled everything from the last three weeks,” she said. “Patterns are tighter than we thought.”
“Show me.”
She turned the screen towards me, and I could see rows of shipment details being sent over as medical exports and relief cargo. They were all clean on the surface, but we all knew exactly what was underneath.
“Look at the timing,” she added. “They’re aligning arrivals with low inspection windows.”
“Smart,” I murmured.
“Calculated,” Sera corrected from the other side of the table. “They’re not just avoiding detection. They’re anticipating it.”
“Which means someone inside is feeding them clearance patterns,” I said.
“Or multiple someones,” Alina added quietly. “If the system were as big as we expect it to be, they would have bought more than enough people.”
I nodded. “Cross-reference the ports.”
Marina leaned over, pulling up another set of data. “Already did. The same three docks keep coming up.”
“The one from the warehouse,” I said.
“Yes.”
Katya spoke then, her voice softer but steady. “There’s more.”
We all looked at her, and she slid a printed sheet across the table. It highlighted financial routing and shell accounts, talking about layered transactions under fake accounts. I felt something shift the second I saw it.
“Where did you get this?” I asked.
“From a contact in the survivor network,” she replied. “Someone who used to move money for them.”
My jaw tightened. “Walk me through it.”
“They’re funneling payments through multiple intermediaries,” she said, pointing to the chart. “But the origin point stays consistent.”
“Where?”
She hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then she said it. “None of it is here. It’s in Russia.”
The room went quiet. Shit. Slowly, Diane zoomed in on the chain, and a name appeared at the center of it. It was clear and unmistakable.
Sergei Volkov.
Everything stopped, and no one spoke for several seconds.
No one moved. Despite not being based in Russia and having no power there, we all knew what that name meant.
It represented old power and untouchable reach.
I should have known that a network such as this could not be run by some small fish in the sea.
It had to be someone as big as Sergei Volkov.
A man who did not operate unless he controlled everything beneath him.
“This isn’t local,” Sera said finally, her voice lower now.
“No,” I replied quietly.
“It never was.”
Across the room, I felt it before I saw it.
Kliment had left us all alone for the past few hours, but I turned my head slightly when he walked inside, something in his expression changing.
The change was subtle but noticeable and felt dangerous.
His posture had gone completely still, every line of his body tightening just enough to signal something deeper. Something that looked like recognition.
“Did someone say Sergei Volkov. How is he linked with this?” he asked, without wasting time. His hands were spread apart on the table, his posture commanding attention in a way that only he could.
“So you know him,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
His gaze shifted to me slowly. “Yes.”
The single word carried weight.
“Everyone does,” he added.
That didn’t reassure me, but it confirmed everything.
If Kliment knew all about it, it only meant that the situation was bigger than I could have ever imagined.
He quietly stepped away from the table and pulled his phone out, dialing as all six of us looked on.
I did not know who he was calling, but I was more than certain that he was calling them for me.
“Viktor,” he said as soon as the line connected. “I want everything on Sergei Volkov. I want his routes, movements, accounts, and operations. Let’s find out what is that old asshole involved in these days.”
He walked away without another word, but I knew that Kliment Romanov was now a part of this thing just as much as I was, and he was not someone who backed away without winning.