Chapter 4
VALENTIN
The woman is asleep in the holding suite when I bring the others into the observation room.
I don’t know why that bothers me. People sleep after interrogations.
The body shuts down once it decides the immediate threat has passed from lethal to manageable.
She curled toward the wall with her boots on and her bag strap wrapped twice around her wrist, which tells me she still expects to need it.
The go-bag is the only thing in this building that belongs to her, and she’s guarding it with her life.
Zavid arrives with his legal pad and a look that says he’s already found something that’s going to complicate my morning.
Nathan drops into the chair nearest the monitors with one leg bouncing because sitting still has never been his strong suit.
Kolya stands against the back wall. Nadia is already at the workstation with three databases open and a fourth loading.
I close the door.
“She’s not Katya.” I say it for the room, not for myself.
I already knew that. “She’s not bait. She’s a civilian.
Her ex-husband killed her sister, stalked her across state lines, and she ended up in a motel room that happened to be two miles from our building.
” I pause long enough that every pair of eyes settles on me.
“That should make the next decision simple.”
Nathan looks at me. “Should.”
Nadia taps one key and brings up a file summary.
“No syndicate history. No aliases. No sealed arrests, no flagged border crossings, no deposits large enough to suggest outside funding, and no known contact with Antonov’s people.
On paper, she’s exactly what she says she is.
A motel desk clerk with a DV history and a dead sister. ”
“Agreed, but her face is close enough to Katya’s to pass.
She’s the same height, has the same coloring, and very similar bone structure.
With Katya’s wardrobe, her jewelry, and the right lighting, she could hold a visual for thirty seconds before anyone with firsthand contact started asking questions. ”
Nadia nods. “In a controlled setting, she could work.”
My conscience tugs at the idea of using her as bait, but I push back against it.
“It doesn’t end there, because Grant Winters is an Indiana-licensed bail enforcement agent with access to courthouse databases, out-of-state bond systems, and law enforcement contacts.
He can track people for a living, and he used those skills to stalk the woman who left him, and to avoid consequences for murdering her sister.
” I turn to Zavid. “Tell them what you found.”
Zavid opens the legal pad and sets a printout beside it.
“Grant Winters was originally charged with first-degree murder for the death of Mara Carlstrom. The charge was supported by the evidence. Witness statements were strong. Physical evidence was strong. The case should have gone to trial without difficulty.”
He turns the printout so the table can see it.
“Four weeks after the filing, the defense moved under seal to suppress the forensic evidence. The assigned assistant state’s attorney, Mabel Jimenez, filed a response conceding the motion, then moved for a nolle prosequi.
The court granted the sealing request, and the prosecution was abandoned.
Two witnesses withdrew their cooperation in the same window, and Grant Winters walked. ”
Nathan stops moving. “That sounds like someone deliberately tanked the case.”
“Yes.” Zavid clicks his pen once. “The sealed motion was routed through a paralegal firm that bills through a shell company registered to a man named Armen Sidorov.”
Nadia pulls up the connection on her screen.
“Armen Sidorov manages Kirill Antonov’s money.
He runs laundering through motel chains, import businesses, bail funds, and legal defense pipelines.
The shell company that paid the paralegal firm filing Mabel Jimenez’s response touches the same financial channel that funded three of Kirill’s evidence-suppression operations in the past eighteen months. ”
They look at each other, putting together the same picture I assembled in the interrogation room when I saw Grant’s occupation and the connections.
Margot Carlstrom’s sister wasn’t just murdered.
The murder case was taken apart by the same financial network that’s been leaking information from inside my organization.
“Margot doesn’t know any of this. She knows her sister was killed and the case fell apart. She doesn’t know why. I only gave her a very brief explanation that the same pattern used to bury her sister’s case has been used against my operation.”
Nathan tilts his head. “But she looks exactly like Katya.”
“Close enough to pass,” Nadia says. “With the right preparation.”
I already know what Nathan is going to say before he says it. I can see it building in the way he shifts forward in the chair and glances between Nadia’s screen and me. “You want to use her.”
“I’m considering it.”
“You’re past considering. You’re deciding and looking for someone to tell you the thing you’ve already chosen is also the right thing.
” Nathan rubs his jaw. “I’m not going to be that someone, because I’m not sure it is.
Sergei would have already installed her and called it strategy.
” His voice gets flat when he invokes our father.
He does it deliberately because Nathan never mentions Sergei without wanting me to hear the comparison.
“He wouldn’t be sitting in this room pretending it’s protection. ”
Our father ran the Bykov Syndicate with surgical control and absolute indifference to what the people inside it wanted. Women were assets, leverage, or decoration. Daria should have been the death that proved women weren’t assets, but Father turned her into a security correction instead.
I look at Nathan long enough that he glances away. “She isn’t Katya, and I won’t use her the way he would have.”
“That’s a good line.” He nods. “I’d feel better about it if you hadn’t already put her in a holding suite with a camera in the ceiling and a guard she didn’t ask for.
” He glances at the screen. “You should have let her go already. This doesn’t seem much different from what she’s clearly been through. ”
I wince slightly at the accurate assessment.
I built a cleaner room than Grant ever had, with better locks and better reasons.
It still locks from my side. Nathan told me after Daria’s funeral that our father’s version of love looked exactly like his version of business, and I needed to decide early which one I was building toward.
I told him I’d already decided. He said he’d believe me when I showed him.
I still haven’t shown him. The woman asleep in my holding suite isn’t evidence that I’ve changed the pattern.
Kolya speaks from the back wall. “She’s a security risk regardless. Inside, she sees too much. Outside, she talks too much. We need to decide how to manage that before the risk manages us.”
“What kind of management are you suggesting?” Zavid asks, and the question is careful enough that I know he’s already thinking about the legal language he’ll need if Kolya’s answer goes where he thinks it’s going.
“Containment. Oversight. Controlled access.” Kolya doesn’t flinch from the implication. “She stays inside our perimeter because letting her go creates a trail, and trails lead to questions I’d rather not answer with prosecutors.”
Nadia rotates her chair to face the room.
“There’s a timing problem with Mabel Jimenez’s filings.
Her old legal channel lit up again three days after Katya disappeared.
The same financial channel paid intermediaries connected to both the sealed defense motion in Grant’s case and our compromised shipments.
If Kirill’s network helped bury a murder case for an out-of-state bail enforcement agent who can track people across state lines, they weren’t doing it out of charity. They were buying access.”
Nathan sits forward. “Access to what?”
“To Grant’s skill set. His occupation gives him proximity to databases, courthouse clerks, bond systems, and people who are trying to disappear.
People like Katya. Or anyone else Kirill needs found.
” Nadia pulls up a map with overlapping data points.
“I’m still building the full connection, but the financial channel is the same.
The same money that weakened Mara Carlstrom’s murder case also funded the information leaks that compromised three of our shipping routes. ”
Her grief and my leak now share a payment channel.
Someone built a pipeline between Kirill’s network and the legal system that touches both Grant’s case and my compromised routes.
“She has a personal reason to want Kirill’s protection network destroyed.
Her sister’s murder is connected to the same channel that’s bleeding us.
If I can verify the Mabel Jimenez thread, I can use Margot to feed one controlled message into Kirill’s network and see who moves. ”
Zavid sets the pen down. “You’re describing the recruitment of a coerced civilian into an intelligence operation. Polina will ask the same question I’m about to ask. Is this protection, or is this a different word for the same thing Sergei did?”
Zavid has been my attorney long enough to know where the nerve is, and he presses it because it’s his job to point out where I’m about to fuck up. It’s also his job to fix those fuck-ups if I proceed.
I don’t answer right away. Instead, I look at the monitor.