Chapter 11 Pyotr
Pyotr
I can still feel her trembling beneath my hands.
It’s been almost twenty-four hours since I left Daria on the kitchen floor, and my mind keeps circling back to the same images. The way her eyes went glassy when she shattered. The soft sounds she made against my palm. The trust in her face when she asked me to take over.
I’ve touched plenty of women. I’ve made them come, made them scream, and made them forget their names. But I’ve never had one look at me the way Daria did when she came back to herself. Like I was something more than a weapon. Like I was safe.
The thought unsettles me.
I barely slept last night. I saw her every time I closed my eyes. The curve of her neck when she tilted her head. The way her lips parted when I slid my fingers inside her. The flush that spread across her chest as she fell apart.
I got up twice to check the locks, because I needed something to do with my hands.
This morning, she acted like nothing happened. She made breakfast for Kira, helped her daughter with homework, and taught two piano lessons. Normal. Routine. Like I hadn’t made her come on her kitchen floor while she gasped my name.
Maybe compartmentalizing is how she survives. Putting things in boxes and shoving them into corners where they can’t hurt her.
I understand that better than she knows.
My phone goes off on the nightstand, and Dmitri’s name flashes across the screen. I stare at it for a moment, letting it ring twice before I pick up.
“Report.”
His voice snaps me back to the job I’m supposed to be doing while I’m distracted by the woman I’m investigating.
“I’ve completed a second thorough search of the apartment.”
“And?”
I think about the burner phone hidden in her drawer, the stack of cash behind her winter coats, and the ledger page I found yesterday. I’ve been trying to make sense of it.
The evidence is damning on the surface. Any investigator would take one look and declare the case closed, but something nags at me.
I’ve turned it over in my head for the past twenty-four hours, building a theory I’m not sure Dmitri wants to hear. What I’m about to suggest could sound like I’ve lost my objectivity, letting a pretty face and a sad story cloud my judgment.
Maybe I have, but I’ve been doing this work long enough to trust my instincts, even when they lead somewhere inconvenient.
“I found evidence,” I tell him. “A burner phone with calls from a blocked number, some cash with sequential serial numbers, and a page from a ledger listing flagged account numbers. Everything an investigator would need to condemn her.”
Dmitri sighs, no doubt from the burden of what he thinks he will need to do to his cousin to make a point. “Then it sounds like we have our answer.”
“I’m not sure we do.”
When Dmitri speaks again, his voice has cooled by several degrees. “Explain.”
“The evidence is too clean. Everything was gathered in one location, waiting to be discovered. You and I both know that real criminals don’t operate like that. They scatter their tracks.”
“Maybe she got careless.”
“She’s the opposite of careless. This woman counts every ruble, mends her own clothes, and organizes her closet by season. Someone that meticulous doesn’t leave incriminating evidence in her underwear drawer.”
“People make mistakes under pressure.”
I turn away from the window and run a hand through my hair. “I’ve been doing this work for years, Dmitri. I know what planted evidence looks like. This was staged.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Someone wants her to look guilty. Someone who knows what kind of evidence would condemn her and had access to plant it in her home.”
Dmitri goes quiet again. I can picture him in his study, running through the same scenarios I’ve been running for days. Weighing evidence against instinct and facts against feelings.
“You’re asking me to ignore evidence that ties a family member to crimes against us.”
“I’m asking you to give me more time to find out who put it there.”
“And if you’re wrong? If she played you? If this is the kind of manipulation she’s been trained to execute?”
The question lands in my gut like a fist. I could be wrong. I could be compromised. I could be making the same mistake I made in Syria, trusting someone who’s been playing me from the start.
But I don’t think I am.
“She doesn’t fit the profile of a conspirator coordinating with allies. My gut tells me she’s being controlled.”
“By whom?”
“If I had to guess? Her ex-husband, Bogdan Lebedev.”
The name settles in the space between us, and I hear Dmitri’s chair creak.
“Yevgeny Lebedev’s nephew?”
“The same.”
“That complicates things.”
“I know.”
“If we move against Bogdan without proof, we risk a war with the St. Petersburg organization.”
“Which is why I need more time to build a case. Something solid we can bring to Yevgeny. I don’t think the pakhan of the local Bratva would go along with something like this. Not against you and your family.”
I wait out his pause as he works through the implications. Starting a conflict with the St. Petersburg Bratva over a family matter would be messy, but if Bogdan has been using Daria to move money against Kozlov interests without his uncle’s knowledge, that changes the equation.
“All right, stick to the original timeline. You’ve got ten more days to get to the bottom of this. That’s all I can give you. The federal investigation is building momentum, and if Daria’s name remains attached to those accounts much longer, we’ll all be answering questions we’d rather avoid.”
“Understood.”
When the line goes dead, I hang up and pocket the phone before I leave the spare room. The apartment is quiet except for a sound drifting from the living room. Piano music, something slow and mournful.
I follow the music and find Daria seated with her back to me. Her fingers glide across the keys with the kind of ease that comes from decades of practice. She’s playing from memory, from somewhere deep inside herself that words can’t reach.
I recognize the piece. Chopin. One of the nocturnes. I heard my mother play it once, years ago, before she died and took all the music in our house with her.
Daria doesn’t acknowledge me in the doorway. Maybe she hasn’t noticed. Maybe she has and chooses to ignore my presence. I watch her play, her shoulders rising and falling with each passage, pouring something wordless and aching into the keys.
The piece builds to its peak and then slowly fades as the final notes dissolve into silence. She sits motionless with her hands resting on the keyboard and her head bowed.
“I know you’re there.” She doesn’t turn around.
“I know you know.”
“Did you need something?”
A professional would tell her they were passing through, that the music caught their attention, and that they didn’t mean to intrude. That’s what the man Dmitri sent here would say.
I’m tired of being that man.
“You know I was sent here to find evidence to confirm your guilt and give Dmitri what he needs to make a decision,” I say.
Her fingers twitch against the keys, but she doesn’t look at me. “And?”
“I found it.”
She stills.
I step into the room, moving closer but keeping distance between us. “I found enough to conclude that you’re guilty of what Dmitri suspects.”
“Then why are you telling me instead of Dmitri?”
“I already told him. I also told him that I think someone planted it.”
She turns now, her eyes meeting mine, and what I see there makes my heart sink. She looks like someone who stopped hoping a long time ago.
“You think someone planted it,” she repeats.
“Someone wants you to look guilty, Daria. Someone who had access to your home and knows what kind of evidence would condemn you.”
She stares at me, and I watch her working through how much to reveal and how much to keep hidden behind those walls she’s spent years building.
“Why are you telling me this?” She blinks back tears.
“Because I need to know the truth.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“Your job is to investigate me and to report your findings to Dmitri. Your job isn’t to warn me. It isn’t to give me a chance to explain myself. So, why are you doing it?”
I think about all the jobs I’ve done for Dmitri over the years.
All the people I’ve investigated, interrogated, and eliminated.
I never warned any of them. I never gave them chances or asked for explanations.
I gathered the facts, delivered the verdict, and moved on to the next assignment without looking back.
But Daria isn’t like the others. She’s not a rival or a traitor or a threat to be neutralized.
She’s a mother who teaches piano lessons to keep food on the table.
She’s a woman who volunteers at a shelter every weekend because she knows what it’s like to need help and have nowhere to turn.
She’s someone who flinches at calls from blocked phone numbers and plays Chopin in the dark when her mind won’t quiet.
She’s someone who asked me to take over because she needed to stop thinking for a while. Someone who trusted me enough to fall apart in my hands.
“I’m tired of following orders that destroy innocent people,” I say, “and of being the weapon everyone points without asking questions first.”
She searches my face. “And you think I’m innocent?”
“I think someone has been controlling you. Threatening you. Using you as a shield for their crimes. I suspect you’ve been carrying something alone for a very long time, and I think you’re exhausted from the weight of it.”
She doesn’t deny it, but she doesn’t confirm it, either.
“I can’t help you if I don’t know what I’m dealing with,” I continue. “Something about you makes me need the truth before I make decisions that can’t be undone.”
She turns back to the piano without a word. Her fingers find the keys again, and the first notes of something new fill the apartment. Not Chopin this time; something that sounds like a door closing.
I stand there for a moment longer, watching her back, watching her shoulders curve inward like she’s trying to disappear into the music.
Then I leave her to it.
Some conversations can’t be forced. Some truths have to be offered freely or not at all.
I just hope she offers hers before my ten days run out.