Chapter 3 Pyotr
Pyotr
The refrigerator contains half a carton of eggs, a wilting head of cabbage, and three containers of leftover soup that look like they’ve been stretched across multiple meals.
I stand in Daria’s kitchen on my first full morning in her apartment, cataloging the contents of her cupboards while she showers down the hall.
The evidence doesn’t match the profile of a woman laundering millions through offshore accounts.
The dishes are chipped and mismatched. The pots and pans show years of heavy use. The pantry holds generic brands and bulk purchases, the kind of careful shopping that speaks to counting every ruble.
If Daria Kozlov is stealing from the family, she’s certainly not spending it here.
I walk into the living room and examine the furniture more closely than I did last night.
The couch cushions are worn thin in places, and someone has stitched a tear in the armrest with thread that doesn’t quite match.
The coffee table has water rings that no amount of polish can hide.
The only thing in this apartment that looks well-maintained is the piano; its keys are polished, and its surface is free of dust.
That piano is her livelihood. Everything else is survival.
Kira wanders out of her bedroom in her dinosaur pajamas, rubbing her eyes and yawning. She spots me standing by the bookshelf and freezes for a moment before her face splits into a gap-toothed grin.
“You’re still here,” she announces, like it’s wonderful news.
“I am.”
“Mama said you’re staying with us for a while. Like a sleepover but longer.”
“Something like that.”
She meanders over to the kitchen table and climbs into a chair with her legs swinging above the floor. “What’s for breakfast?”
“I don’t know. That’s up to your mother.”
“Mama usually makes kasha. But sometimes on weekends we have blini if she has enough flour.” Kira tilts her head and studies me with blue eyes. “Do you like blini?”
“I don’t have strong feelings about them.”
“That’s weird. Everyone has feelings about blini.” She kicks her feet against the chair legs. “My friend Masha says her papa makes the best blini in St. Petersburg, but I think she’s lying, because I’ve tasted them and they’re not that good.”
The bathroom door opens, and Daria emerges in a cloud of steam, her wet hair wrapped in a towel. She’s wearing a faded sweater and yoga pants, and her feet are bare. She pulls up short when she sees me standing in her living room.
“You’re up early,” she observes.
I shrug. “Old habits.”
“Military?”
“Something like that.”
She doesn’t push for details, just moves past me toward the kitchen. “I need to get Kira ready for school and prep for my first lesson. There’s coffee if you want it.”
I watch her wander around the small kitchen, pulling out a pot and measuring oats. Her hands are steady now, unlike last night when they trembled every time she looked at me. Whatever composure she lost in the darkness, she’s rebuilt it in the morning light.
“How many students do you have?” I ask.
She glances at me over her shoulder. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’m trying to understand your schedule. Dmitri wants me to monitor your movements, remember?”
A muscle ticks in her jaw, but she answers. “Four students most days of the week. Two in the afternoon, and two in the early evening. More during summer when school’s out.”
“And that’s enough to cover your expenses?”
“It’s enough to keep us fed and housed.” She stirs the pot with more force than necessary. “We are not living in luxury, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
I have noticed. That’s the problem.
Her phone vibrates on the counter, and I watch her body go rigid. She glances at the screen, and the color drains from her face so quickly that I think she might faint. Even from my position, I can make out “Blocked Number”.
“I need to take this.” She’s already moving toward the bathroom.
“Who is it?”
“No one. Just... give me a minute.”
She disappears into the bathroom and shuts the door, but the apartment walls are thin. I can hear her voice, though I can’t make out the words. Whatever she’s saying, it sounds like pleading. Like bargaining.
When she emerges a few minutes later, her hands are shaking again, and her eyes are red-rimmed. She doesn’t look at me as she crosses back to the stove to stir the kasha.
“Everything okay?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
“Fine.” Her right eye twitches a bit. “Just a wrong number.”
We both know she’s lying, but I don’t push yet. I file the information away and watch her slowly rebuild her composure.
Daria walks Kira to school after breakfast while I stay behind to continue sweeping the apartment.
I check behind every piece of furniture, inside every vent, and under every loose floorboard.
I find dust and old receipts and a collection of Kira’s drawings tucked behind the radiator in the living room—a fire hazard waiting to happen—but no more surveillance equipment.
Whoever planted that camera in Kira’s room either only cared about watching the child or knew the other rooms wouldn’t yield useful intelligence.
Neither possibility sits well with me.
Daria returns before ten, slightly out of breath from the cold. She sheds her coat and heads to the piano, where she runs her fingers over the keys in a quick warmup scale.
“My first student arrives in twenty minutes,” she informs me. “You’ll need to make yourself scarce.”
“I’ll be in the spare room.”
“Good.”
But I don’t go to the spare room. Instead, I position myself in the hallway where I can observe without being seen. I watch her teach. To see if the woman who flinches at blocked phone calls is the same woman who stands accused of betraying her family.
The student is a boy of about eight, accompanied by his mother, who exchanges pleasantries with Daria before settling into a chair by the door. The lesson begins with scales, then moves to a simple piece that the boy murders with enthusiasm but little skill.
Daria doesn’t seem to mind. She sits beside him on the bench, encouraging, correcting his finger placement, and praising every small improvement. Her voice is warm, free of the fear and defensiveness that colors every interaction with me.
“That’s wonderful, Misha,” she tells him after a particularly rough passage. “You’ve been practicing. I can tell.”
The boy beams under her attention and sits up straighter before attacking the next section with renewed energy.
I watch three more lessons go the same way. Each student receives the same patient instruction and encouragement that draws music from reluctant fingers.
By the time the last mother collects her daughter and hands Daria a small fold of rubles, I’ve learned more about her than any surveillance file could tell me.
This woman loves teaching. She loves children. She lights up in their presence in a way that seems impossible to fake.
None of it matches the profile of a cold-blooded traitor.
Kira bursts through the door as the last student leaves, her backpack bouncing against her shoulders and her cheeks pink from the cold.
“Mama! Masha said I could come to her birthday party next week! Can I go? Please, please, please?”
Daria catches her daughter in a hug and smooths her windblown hair. “We’ll talk about it later, malyshka. Did you have a good day?”
“We learned about volcanos. Did you know that some volcanos are under the water? Like, way down at the bottom of the ocean where it’s super dark? And they can make new islands sometimes.”
“That’s fascinating.”
“And Mrs. Petrova said my drawing of a T. Rex was the best in the class.” Kira sees me lurking in the hallway, and her face lights up. “Pyotr! Do you want to see my dinosaur collection?”
I glance at Daria, who looks like she’d rather I declined. But Kira is already grabbing my hand and tugging me toward her bedroom with surprising strength for such a small person.
“Come on, come on! I have seventeen dinosaurs, and I know all their names and what they eat and everything.”
The dinosaur collection in question is arranged on a low shelf in her bedroom, plastic figures in various poses and sizes.
“This is Rex.” Kira holds up a green T. Rex with tiny arms. “He’s my favorite because he has feathers, see? The movie people got it all wrong ’cause they didn’t know yet, but the bone scientists figured out T. Rexes were actually fluffy. Well, not fluffy fluffy. But they had feathers and stuff.”
“I remember reading something about that.”
“And this is Cera. She’s a Triceratops. She and Rex are best friends, even though in real life, they probably would have fought.” Kira sets them on the floor and reaches for another figure. “This is Dippy. He’s a diplodocus. He’s really tall, but he only eats plants.”
She continues through the entire collection, sharing detailed biographies of each dinosaur and its fictional relationships with the others. I crouch beside her and listen, watching her small hands arrange and rearrange the figures like a field general planning a battle.
“Why do you have scars on your hands?” she asks out of nowhere, interrupting her monologue about a stegosaurus named Sport.
I look down at my hands. The knife scar across my left forearm. The burn marks on my right knuckles. The dozen smaller marks from fights and accidents and one particularly bad encounter with a broken bottle in a Chechen bar.
“I told you. From working.”
“But what kind of work makes scars like that?” She reaches out and rubs one of the marks with a tiny finger. “Mama has scars, too. She doesn’t like to talk about them.” Kira’s eyes meet mine with uncomfortable directness. “Did someone hurt you like someone hurt Mama?”
My stomach lurches, and a lump lodges in my throat. “What do you mean, someone hurt your mama?”
But Daria’s voice cuts in from the doorway before Kira can answer. “Kira, that’s enough bothering our guest. Time to wash up for dinner.”
“But Mama—”
“Now, please.”
Kira sighs dramatically but obeys, scooping up Rex and Cera before trotting out of the room. Daria lingers in the doorway, and I can see the question in her eyes. How much did her daughter reveal? How much did I understand?
“She’s a good kid,” I offer.
“She asks too many questions.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
Daria doesn’t respond, just turns and follows her daughter down the hall.
I retreat to the spare room to make an evening report to Dmitri. The phone rings twice before he picks up.
“What have you found?”
“Nothing definitive,” I admit. “The apartment shows no signs of hidden wealth. It’s filled with secondhand furniture, minimal food, and clothing that’s been mended multiple times. She teaches piano lessons that barely cover her expenses.”
“That could be a cover. Smart criminals don’t flaunt their money. Being part of our family, she would know that.”
“It could be. But nothing I’ve observed suggests she’s living beyond her means.
” I pause, choosing my next words carefully.
“She received a call today from a blocked number. Her face went white, and she excused herself to another room. I couldn’t hear the conversation, but her demeanor afterward was. .. distressed.”
“How do you mean?”
“She looked like someone being threatened, not someone coordinating with co-conspirators.”
Dmitri falls silent. Then, “Are you developing doubts about her guilt?”
I think about the woman who patiently taught children to play piano all day. The mother who hugged her daughter and smoothed her hair. The person living in a shabby apartment with a half-empty refrigerator and furniture held together by hope and thread.
“I’m developing questions,” I reply, keeping it vague. “The evidence in her file doesn’t match what I’m observing. That’s all I can say for now.”
“Then find better evidence, one way or the other. The warrant drops in forty-eight hours, Pyotr. If Daria is guilty, I need to know before they come knocking on our doors. If she’s innocent, I need proof I can use to redirect their attention elsewhere.”
“And if I can’t find proof either way?”
“Then she becomes a liability regardless of her guilt. Boris and a team are on standby in St. Petersburg if you need backup. Just say the word.”
Boris Smirnov is a police captain who also serves as the head of Kozlov security.
He trained me when I joined the organization four years ago, and I’ve seen firsthand what happens when he’s sent to handle a problem.
The man is loyal to the family above all else, and that loyalty doesn’t leave room for mercy.
The implication is clear: If I can’t determine Daria’s innocence, Dmitri will make the problem disappear.
“Understood,” I reply, though something in my chest rebels against the word.
“Keep me updated.”
The line goes dead, and I lower the phone from my ear. I only have forty-eight hours to find the truth about Daria Kozlov before the decision is taken out of my hands.
I turn toward the door and freeze.
Kira is standing in the hallway, clutching Rex the T. Rex to her chest. Her blue eyes are wide and glassy with tears she’s trying not to shed.
“Are you here to take my mama away?” she whispers.
I stare at her small face, at the fear she’s too young to understand but old enough to feel, and guilt twists my gut like a knife.