Chapter 31 Luca
LUCA
Maxim shows up at seven in the morning with coffee and the look of a man who has been rehearsing what he wants to say since before sunrise.
I’m already at my desk when he walks in. Didn’t sleep much. The estate has a particular silence at night without the twins in it, the kind you notice in your chest before you notice it with your ears, and I’ve been waking at three in the morning and lying there cataloging it.
He sets one of the cups in front of me and sits across the desk without being invited. “You look terrible.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Pavel brought something earlier.”
“That’s not an answer.” He takes the lid off his own cup. Studies me the way he’s been doing since Anna left. “Have you spoken to her?”
“No.”
“She’s still not taking your calls.”
“Correct.”
He’s quiet for a moment. Outside the window, the grounds are wet from last night’s rain, the grass dark, the garden Anna planted with the twins still neatly kept by the staff, even though no one is here to see it.
Mila’s flower beds. Alexei’s section where he’d been planning the train track that would circle the entire estate.
I look away from the window.
“The twins saw me yesterday,” I say. “Anna arranged it. An hour at Viktor’s house, her parents present the entire time, her standing in the doorway with her arms crossed.” I pick up the coffee. “Mila cried when I left. Alexei asked me when they were coming home.”
“What did you tell him?” Maxim asks.
“That I was working on it.”
“Are you?”
“I’m trying.” I set the cup down. “She won’t take my calls.
She’s read the restructuring documents, I know she has, but she hasn’t said anything about them.
She just arranges the visits and hands me the twins for an hour and stands there watching like I’m a variable she hasn’t finished calculating. ”
“She’s angry.”
“She has every right to be angry. That’s not the problem.” I lean back in my chair. “The problem is that she’s at her parents’ house in an ordinary neighborhood with no security infrastructure, and she’s been asking questions she shouldn’t be asking.”
Maxim goes still. “What kind of questions?”
“The kind that lead back to the Malikov network.” I watch his face change. “Pavel has men on the house. They’ve been reporting her movements. She made a call to an old Kestrel Maritime contact named Gennady. Asked him about a company called Sorokin Freight.”
“She found that name on her own?”
“Her father’s old files. She’s been going through them.” I stand and move to the window. “Viktor also got a call from a former associate named Borin. Word is there’s been movement in the eastern networks. Surveillance on contacts tied to my operation.”
“And she heard this.”
“She was in the room.”
Maxim sets down his cup slowly. “Does she understand what Sorokin Freight actually is?”
“Gennady told her it’s a Malikov front. So yes. She understands enough to be dangerous.”
“You need to get her back here.”
“I can’t force her.”
“You’ve forced her into plenty of things before.”
I look at him over my shoulder. He doesn’t flinch from it.
“This is different,” I say.
“Why? Because you actually care about her?”
I don’t answer that. Turn back to the window.
“She knows about the security,” I say. “Pavel’s men.
She noticed them on the second day. She called me about it, which is the only call she’s initiated since she left, and she told me she knew they were there and she wasn’t going to fight me on it because the twins were inside that house.
” I pause. “She also said if I was using it as a way to surveil her rather than protect her, she’d move somewhere I couldn’t find. ”
“But she didn’t move.”
“No. She didn’t.” Because she’s not stupid.
She knows she can’t hide from me, and she knows the twins need whatever protection I can give them, even from a distance.
“There’s no version of this where I can stop seeing the children.
They’re mine. She knows that. So she tolerates the security because it protects them too. ”
“But she still won’t come home.”
“No.”
Maxim is quiet. Then he says, “Let me talk to her.”
I turn around. “No.”
“Papa—”
“The last time you confronted her about something this important, you questioned the legitimacy of her children at a dinner table. She’s not going to want to hear from you right now.”
“That was weeks ago. Things are different now.”
“Not that different. Not yet.” I move back to my desk. “This isn’t something you can fix for me.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
Before I can answer, my phone buzzes. Pavel.
I pick it up. “Talk.”
“Anna made another call this morning. Different contact. Someone with direct ties to one of Borin’s associates.” His voice is flat in the way it gets when the news is bad, and he wants me to hear it clearly. “The associate has connections inside the Malikov network. Not peripheral. Inside.”
The room gets very quiet.
“She’s not just asking questions anymore,” Pavel continues. “She’s getting close enough that the wrong person is going to notice. If they haven’t already.”
“How exposed is she?”
“Enough. The men watching the house aren’t going to be sufficient if the Malikovs decide she’s worth picking up. Viktor’s house has one lock on the front door and a back garden that opens onto a public alley. It’s not defensible.”
“Double the team. I want the alley covered, and I want someone inside the perimeter, not just on the street.”
“Already actioned. But, Luca.” A pause. “She needs to stop digging. If she makes contact with anyone closer to the Malikov network than this, she’s going to get herself killed. And possibly the family with her.”
Maxim is watching me from across the desk.
I pick up my personal phone and dial Anna’s number.
It rings four times. Five. Six. Voicemail.
I hang up and dial again. Voicemail.
I set the phone down on the desk and look at it for a moment.
Maxim stands. “Papa—”
“I know.”
“She doesn’t understand what she’s touching.”
“I know that too.”
“Then do something.”
“I’m trying.” I pick up the phone again and call Pavel back. “I need you to get a message to Anna directly. Not through me. Go to the house yourself, tell her I need to speak with her, and tell her it’s not about the marriage.”
“And if she refuses?”
I look out at the wet garden. At Mila’s flower beds and the empty lawn where Alexei had been planning his train track. “Tell her it’s about her family’s safety. She’ll listen to that.”
I hang up.
Maxim stands at the door. “Do you want me to stay?”
“No. Go back to Moscow. Finish the distribution work.” I turn back to my desk. “I’ll handle this.”
He leaves without arguing, which tells me he understands the severity better than he’s letting on.
I sit alone in the study. Pull up the security feed from the cameras Pavel has positioned near Viktor’s street.
Grainy footage. A quiet neighborhood road.
Two of my men are visible as ordinary pedestrians if you don’t know what to look for.
Anna’s parents’ car in the driveway. Curtains closed on the upper floor.
She’s in there pulling on threads that lead directly into the most dangerous network in this city, and she has no idea how close she already is to the point where pulling stops being a choice.
My phone stays silent on the desk.
I stare at it. Pick it up. Dial again.
Four rings. Five.
Nothing.