14. Ruslan
RUSLAN
The man stops lying after the third tooth.
That’s usually how it goes. Men lie while they think pain is still a negotiation. They deny, bargain, insult, pray. Then something in the body understands that pride will not protect it, and the truth comes out with blood.
He’s tied to a chair in the back room of a closed butcher shop on Vanya Street. The place hasn’t sold meat in nine years, but the drains still work, and the neighbors know better than to complain about cars arriving after midnight.
Stepan stands near the freezer door, arms folded, face bored. Dima is by the exit. His arm healed badly years ago, leaving him with a stiffness he pretends not to notice.
Kirill spits blood onto the tile and says, “I told you everything.”
I hit him again. His head snaps to the side. The chair scrapes back an inch.
“No,” I say. “You told me what you think I already know.”
Kirill Sokolov has been stealing from me for three months, and the worst part is how patient he was about it.
He didn’t take a whole shipment. That would have been stupid.
He let the losses look ordinary at first. A truck came in lighter than expected.
A crate was marked damaged before anyone checked it.
A driver changed his route by six minutes and blamed traffic.
On paper, each mistake had an explanation.
Together, they formed a pattern.
Pavel found it last week, buried under delivery reports and corrected invoices. By then, enough product had disappeared to make the warehouse men nervous. Enough money had gone missing to make my captains start watching one another.
That’s why Kirill is hanging from a hook in the back room of a closed butcher shop, wrists tied above his head, feet barely touching the stained tile.
That’s why I need a location, not an apology.
I stand in front of him and flex my hand once. “Where is it?” I ask.
Kirill breathes through his mouth. “I don’t know.”
I hit him. His body swings slightly from the hook.
Stepan watches from the freezer door, arms folded, saying nothing. Pavel is near the counter with the file. Dima stands behind Kirill, close enough that Kirill knows what happens if I step away.
Kirill breathes hard through his nose. “I don’t have it,” he says.
I flex my right hand. The skin over my knuckles has split again. “You keep saying that,” I say.
“Because it’s true,” Kirill says.
Pavel lifts one invoice from the stack. “The Tuesday shipment left Yard Seven with twelve sealed cases. It arrived with ten.”
Kirill says, “That was loading error.”
Pavel places another paper on top of the first. “The March shipment was short by one.”
Kirill looks at the floor.
Pavel continues, “Two missing in April. One in May. Six cases total.”
Stepan looks at Kirill and says, “That’s a very patient loading error.”
Kirill licks blood from his lip. “I only signed what they gave me.”
“You signed because Lenkov let you,” I say.
That gets his eyes up. There it is.
Lenkov is the night supervisor at Yard Seven.
Eight years under me. Quiet, steady, invisible enough that men stopped watching him.
The thefts were too careful for Kirill alone.
A driver could lose one case. A loader could hide one mistake.
Six over three months meant someone inside the gate was helping.
Kirill swallows.
I step closer. “Where is the stash?”
He shakes his head.
Dima sighs from the door. “This is getting sad.”
Kirill looks at him quickly, then back at me. “I don’t know.”
I hit him in the stomach this time. The chair rocks back and nearly tips before Dima catches it with one hand and shoves it upright again.
Kirill coughs until he gags.
I walk to the small sink in the corner and turn on the tap. The pipes groan before cold water comes out. I wash my hands slowly, letting the blood run pink into the drain.
No one speaks while I clean my knuckles. That silence usually does more than another punch.
I dry my hands with a rough paper towel and turn back.
Kirill is watching me now with the look I wanted from the beginning. Not defiant. Not clever. Just scared enough to understand the difference between pain and ending.
I return to the chair in front of him and sit.
“Listen carefully,” I say. “I know you stole from me. I know Lenkov opened the gate logs for you. I know the cases were moved out in a laundry van that doesn’t belong to any laundry service in this city. What I don’t know is where you put them.”
Kirill’s lips tremble.
I continue, “If you give me the place, you stay alive long enough to explain who was buying. If you lie again, Dima takes over.”
Dima says, “Please lie.”
Kirill closes his eyes. For a moment, I think he will make the worse choice.
Then his shoulders drop. “It’s buried,” he says.
Pavel stops writing.
Stepan straightens slightly.
I keep my voice even. “Where?”
Kirill opens his eyes. “Kindergarten compound.”
Dima says, “You buried stolen cases in a kindergarten yard.”
“It was closed,” Kirill says quickly. “For repairs. No children there at night. No one saw us.”
Stepan walks closer. “Which kindergarten?”
Kirill hesitates.
Dima takes one step forward.
Kirill says the name immediately.
Pavel writes it down.
I ask, “Address?”
Kirill gives it.
“Exact place?” I ask.
Kirill breathes through his mouth, eyes fixed on me. “Back of the compound. There’s a small garden area behind the playhouse. Painted fence. Flowers on it. We dug under the new soil before they planted. The gardener was supposed to finish the next morning.”
“Who is we?” Stepan asks.
Kirill answers, “Me and Lenkov.”
“No one else?” Stepan asks.
“No,” Kirill says.
I look at him.
He shakes his head, panic rising again. “No one else. I swear. Lenkov had the key because his sister works there sometimes. Cleaning staff. He knew the repairs were happening. He said no one would search near kids.”
Pavel mutters, “Idiot.”
Kirill says, “It wasn’t my idea.”
I stand.
Kirill flinches.
“That’s your defense?” I ask. “You only helped bury my stolen shipment in a kindergarten?”
Kirill starts crying harder. “I was going to move it.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“When?” I ask again.
“Tonight,” Kirill says. “Lenkov said tonight. He heard people were checking Yard Seven. He said we had to move it before morning.”
Stepan looks at me.
That part matters. If Lenkov is moving tonight, we don’t have much time.
“What is in the cases?” I ask.
Kirill says, “I didn’t open them.”
I look at Pavel.
Pavel says, “Two cases from the route-data shipment, three customs seal cases, one cash case.”
Stepan’s face tightens.
The money is annoying. The route data and customs seals are worse. In the wrong hands, they don’t just cost money. They expose movement, people, timings, and names that keep other names alive.
I look back at Kirill. “Who was buying?”
Kirill’s mouth opens. No sound comes out.
Dima says, “Here we go.”
I wait.
Kirill whispers, “I don’t know his name.”
I almost hit him again, but Stepan speaks first.
“Description,” he says.
Kirill looks grateful for the easier question. “Older. Maybe fifty. Gray beard. He came in a black Mercedes. Lenkov talked to him. I stayed outside.”
“When?” Pavel asks.
“Last week,” Kirill says. “Behind the gas station on Eighth.”
Pavel writes it down.
I ask, “Levin?”
Kirill hesitates.
That’s enough.
“You heard Levin’s name,” I say.
Kirill says, “Lenkov said it once. He said Levin’s people pay better when the delivery is complete.”
Stepan’s eyes move to mine.
So Levin is still in it. After Anton, after the dead ends, after the false trails, he’s still trying to bleed the east side one careful theft at a time. Unfortunately I found out about it after Anton was dead.
I walk to the window overlooking the warehouse floor. Below, a truck backs into bay three. Two men guide it in with hand signals, unaware that one of their supervisors has been selling pieces of the operation while they worked.
I turn back to Pavel. “Send two men to the kindergarten. They watch only. No entering, no digging, no approaching staff. I want to know if Lenkov is already there.”
Pavel nods and takes out his phone.
Kirill jerks against the ropes. “He’ll know I talked.”
I look at him. “Yes.”
His face goes pale. “I told you where it is,” he says.
“You did,” I say.
“I helped.”
“You helped yourself late.”
He starts to speak again, but I lift one hand, and he stops.
There is nothing more I need from him right now.
I look at Dima. “Keep him here. No one touches him until I come back.”
Dima says, “Shame.”
Kirill closes his eyes.
Stepan follows me out of the office and down the metal stairs. The warehouse air is colder below, full of diesel, dust, and wet concrete. Men keep working, though a few glance our way and look away again quickly.
The driver pulls out of the warehouse yard and turns toward the eastern road, away from the busy part of the city.
The kindergarten Kirill named is not nearby.
It sits on the edge of Marrowick, a small town forty minutes out, the kind of place people move to when they want quiet streets, cheaper rent, and fewer reasons to look over their shoulders.
A good place to hide something.
“Andrei is there,” Pavel says. “The kindergarten is called Little Birch Early Learning. It’s behind the old church road, near the river turn. Small compound. One main gate. One back gate facing a service lane.”
Stepan looks at the map on his phone. “Residential around it?”
“Mostly houses,” Pavel says. “A mechanic’s shed on one side. Empty field behind the service lane.”
I look out the window as the city thins around us. Shops become shuttered garages. Apartment blocks become warehouses, then low houses with tin roofs and narrow lanes between them.
“Where in the compound?” I ask.
Pavel listens again, then says, “Kirill’s description matches. Back-left corner. Garden area behind the playhouse. Painted fence with flowers. There’s a shed beside it.”
Stepan’s jaw tightens. “Children’s garden.”
“Yes,” Pavel says.
No one speaks for a few seconds.
The car moves over a rough patch of road, and the tires hum against broken asphalt.
A kindergarten outside the city. A garden behind a playhouse. Six stolen cases buried under soil where children probably plant sunflowers and learn the names of insects.
Lenkov chose well. That makes me want to hurt him more, not less.
Pavel’s phone crackles faintly. He listens, then sits straighter.
“What?” I ask.
Pavel says, “Andrei sees a white van near the back gate. No plates. Two men outside.”
“Lenkov?”
“He thinks so,” Pavel says. “One of them has his build. Dark jacket. Limp on the left side.”
Stepan glances at me. “He’s moving it tonight.”
“Yes.”
Pavel says into the phone, “Do not approach. Keep eyes on the van and the gate.” He pauses, listening. Then he looks back at me. “Andrei says he can take the man by the van quietly.”
“No,” I say.
Pavel straightens. “No contact?”
“No contact.”
Stepan looks up from the map on his phone. He understands before Pavel does. “It’s a kindergarten.”
Pavel nods once and speaks into the phone again. “You heard him. No contact. No movement unless they leave with the cases.”
Another pause.
Pavel’s mouth tightens. “Because the Pakhan said no.”
I look at him.
Pavel corrects himself immediately. “Because there may be cameras, neighbors, and children nearby. Stay invisible.”
No guns unless I say. No shots near the school.
No mistakes that a child might pay for in the morning.
I step out of the car into the cold and look toward the painted wall.
Lenkov used a kindergarten because he thought I would see only the stash.
He was wrong.
But I’m not going to let him get away with it either. He’ll pay with blood.