Chapter 29
MILA
We are in the medical wing. Nico is on the second cot. Shirt off. Forearm taped and ribs taped. Gia is stitching the cut at his eyebrow.
I sit on the stool beside him.
Quiet.
“Skazhi mne, chto on skazal.” Tell me what he said.
He looks at me. He takes one breath.
Voice rough.
“Sokolov told me. Before he left the room. Your father. Alexei poisoned him. Digoxin in his tea. Three months.”
The room I am in goes flat.
“He said you were ten.”
Gia does not look up. The stitch goes in.
“He said you brought him the tea. He said you sat beside him while he died.”
I do not move.
My jaw goes tight. My right hand closes on the edge of the cot. The grip does not open.
My father did not die of his heart.
My father was killed slow while I sat next to the bed.
I take one breath. Another. The third is the one that holds.
Nico’s hand finds my knee. One press. His fingers are warm through the fabric and my pulse spikes hard and I hate that it does and I need it to keep doing it.
I stand. I press my mouth to the corner of his forehead where there is no cut.
His breath changes against my cheek. His jaw goes tighter than the medic’s stitches allow. His hand doesn’t let go of my knee until I step back.
I walk to the back room.
The back room.
Marco at comms. Izzy at her laptop, six monitors lit.
Renzo standing at the table, vest still on, the blood on his sleeve dried.
Dante at the head of the table, signet ring on his hand.
Cassia next to him, the bump full under the silk robe, hair down.
Nonna in the doorway in her apron with her rosary in her left hand.
Nico’s chair is empty.
I’m at the table.
My hand is clean. Giada scrubbed Sofia’s blood off it in the medical wing while I stood at the sink and didn’t speak.
Sofia is in surgery. The bullet missed the kidney. Giada said missed. I held the word.
Now I am here.
I walked into the back room without being invited. Nobody told me to leave.
The door opens.
Nico. White shirt on over the bandages, sleeve down over the taped forearm. The cut at his eyebrow is closed. He looks at me once when he walks in. Then he looks at the table. He takes his place at the far side where the Consigliere stands.
Dante looks at Nico.
Nico. Voice flat. The Consigliere register.
“Sokolov confirmed Morozov is at the plantation. He was waiting for Sokolov to deliver me. He’s been waiting three years for that conversation. He won’t know Sokolov is dead until his men check in.”
Marco. “Pregnant one is stable. Gia has her in the medical wing. Baby’s heartbeat is strong.”
Izzy. “We have Sokolov’s body. His phone. I’m pulling the network now.”
Dante. “Morozov.”
Marco. “At the plantation. He does not know yet that Sokolov is dead.”
Dante’s hand turns the signet ring. Once. Twice.
“How long until he knows.”
Izzy. “Velikov shift change is at midnight. They’ll try Sokolov’s phone then. When he does not answer, the alarm goes up the chain. By dawn at the latest.”
“Stepan turn.”
Izzy. “I’m hitting him now. He’ll know within the hour. He’ll respond inside two. I can have him by tomorrow.”
“Boats.”
Renzo. “My river crew at the south landing by the night after next. Forty-eight hours from now.”
“Move it. We end this before he can call in reinforcements.”
Marco. “Dante.”
“In a few days. He gets the night to wait for Sokolov. He gets the morning to realize Sokolov is not coming. He gets the day after to feel the floor go out under him. Then we end him.”
I open my mouth.
I have been silent in this room for months.
I open my mouth and I speak.
Steady. Mine.
“Alexei will be in the dining room at dusk. He is always in the dining room at dusk. The seat at the head. The two lieutenants on either side. The dining room is over the basement and the basement is where he keeps the people he wants to break.”
The room goes still.
Cassia is the first to move. Her hand goes briefly to her belly. Her eyes find mine and hold.
Dante looks at me.
“How do you know.”
“Because my stepfather has a basement under every property he owns. The Moscow apartment had one. The Saint Petersburg house had one. The compound in Tver had one. He puts the dining room over the basement so the screams come up through the floor and the people at the table eat anyway. He learned it from his father. He told my mother on their wedding night that it was a Morozov family tradition. My mother told Yelena. Yelena told me.”
Dante doesn’t speak.
I keep going.
“The plantation he bought years ago. Yelena traced it. She had the schematic. The brick outbuilding is the storage. The basement under the dining room of the main house is the cell. Alexei is in the dining room above it. Always at dusk. Always at the head of the table. The seat to his left is empty. The seat to his right is the second lieutenant. The seat opposite Alexei is the one Yelena and I sat in growing up. The daughter’s seat. ”
I stop.
I look at Dante.
“He needs me dead. I am the last of my father’s line. With me alive, his throne is a fiction.”
“If he had taken Nico to the plantation tonight, he would have put him in that basement. The first round is the cigarette. Alexei always starts with the cigarette. Sokolov was bringing him a gift. The gift did not arrive. By tomorrow night he will know it is not coming. He will be at the dining table eating dinner anyway. He always eats dinner. That is when we take him.”
The room is so quiet I can hear the lamp at Izzy’s station hum.
Izzy is typing. Without looking up.
“Schematic confirms a sub-floor under the main dining room. Hot-spot signature on the satellite IR from last week. I missed it. I’m pulling it now.”
Marco. “Mila.”
I look at him.
“How much more do you have.”
“As much as you want.”
Cassia stands. Walks around the table. Stops beside my chair. Sets her hand on my shoulder. Light. Steady.
“Tell them everything. Russian, if you need to. Translate yourself if it helps.”
I look up at her.
She nods.
I keep going.
Russian code phrases first.
I give Izzy six. The ones Alexei used in my house when I was a child. The phrases for move the cargo, change the route, the wife is asking, the boy is back. The phrase for we have a guest. That’s what Alexei calls a hostage when he’s about to start the interrogation.
Izzy types each into a search field. She has been running pattern analysis on Alexei’s network communications for weeks. Six new phrases give her six new threads.
Then the routine.
Alexei’s morning. Coffee at dawn. He runs three miles on whatever the property has. A road, a track, a treadmill. He showers. He reads two newspapers at the breakfast table. Russian and English. He eats only bread until late morning. He starts working at noon.
He eats lunch with whoever is on the property. He doesn’t take meetings during lunch.
He works through the afternoon.
He eats dinner in the dining room at dusk. He starts dinner with vodka.
The interrogations happen between vodka and dinner.
Renzo. “Why between.”
“Because he is sober for the threat and drunk for the violence. He doesn’t trust himself sober with the violence. He never has.”
Renzo nods.
I keep going.
“The lieutenants. The seven Yelena had photographs of, I knew six by face from the compound in Saint Petersburg. The fourth I knew from a Bratva wedding when I was a girl. The seventh, I knew from the kitchen in Moscow the year my father was dying.”
Izzy is typing as fast as I am speaking. Marco is drawing on the schematic. Renzo has not moved.
Dante is watching me.
Nico has not spoken since his report. He is looking at the table.
I run out of intel after a long stretch.
I stop.
The room exhales. Dante speaks first.
“You’ve been carrying this.”
I look at him.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t tell us.”
“You didn’t ask. And I didn’t trust the household with my stepfather’s empire until tonight.”
“And tonight.”
“Tonight I am done letting him take things that belong to me.”
I look at Dante.
“I am going on the river.”
A beat.
“Mila.”
“I am the only person in this room who has been inside one of Alexei’s basements.
I am the only person who knows what room he keeps his interrogations in and what room he keeps his trophies in.
I speak Russian. I speak English. I can listen for the difference between a Velikov accent and a Morozov accent through a wall. You need me on the river.”
Renzo. “She’s right, Dante.”
Dante looks at Renzo. Looks at me.
Nico has not moved. He is still looking at the table.
“You can shoot.”
“I can shoot. My father taught me.”
“You can take orders in the dark.”
“I have taken orders in the dark for years. From men who didn’t deserve them. I can take them from you.”
A long beat.
Dante nods.
“You’re with Renzo’s team. You don’t leave his sightline. You don’t engage unless Renzo gives the word. You hear Russian, you translate. You see a face you know, you name it. That’s what you’re there for.”
“Yes.”
“You hear me, Mila.”
“I hear you, Dante.”
The first time I have used his name to his face.
He doesn’t react. He just nods.
He looks around the table.
“In a few days. South landing at midnight. The river by one. Plantation by four. Inside the house by four-thirty. Morozov does not see dawn. End of conversation.”
He stands.
Walks out.
The back room moves into final-prep mode.
Marco on comms with the river crew. His father’s old left boxing glove on the shelf above his station. The right one went with him. Renzo with the schematic, drawing entries on the brick building and the main house. Izzy running last patterns on the Stepan turn.
Cassia stays at my shoulder for one more breath.
Then she leans down.
Quiet. Just for me.
“You said you haven’t forgiven him.”
“No. Not yet.”
A pause.
“But you’re still going.”
“He doesn’t get another one. Not from me.”
She straightens. She doesn’t say anything else.
She walks past me toward the kitchen.
Nonna in the doorway tightens her hand on the rosary. She closes her eyes. Her lips move.
I look once at Nico across the table.
He is watching the schematic. The tape on his forearm under the rolled sleeve. The watch on his right wrist. He does not look up.
I walk out of the back room.
I walk past the medical wing. Sofia is still in surgery so I walk to my room.
The chain at my throat.
The folding knife on the dresser.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
The Tsvetaeva-in-translation on the nightstand.
I do not open it.
I look at the window.
The compound is quiet outside. The night is in.
Alexei does not get another.
Not my father. Not Yelena. Not me.
Not anyone in that back room.