16. Ruslan
RUSLAN
By eight thirty, I’m ready to strangle Lenkov for choosing a kindergarten.
Not because the place is difficult to enter.
It’s not. Little Birch Early Learning sits behind a painted fence on the edge of Marrowick, forty minutes from the city, with a main gate facing the road and a service lane running along the back.
The nearest house has curtains open and a television flickering blue in the front room.
The mechanic’s shed beside the compound is closed, padlock on the shutters, no night staff.
Under different circumstances, we could be in and out in ten minutes.
But the kindergarten is full of people.
Cars line the narrow road outside. Parents stand near the entrance, talking in little groups while children in paper crowns run between their legs.
Warm yellow light spills from the windows.
Every few seconds, a door opens and the sound of small voices reaches the service lane where we’re parked in the dark.
Singing. Clapping. Laughter.
I sit in the back of the car and look through the windshield at the far side of the compound.
Stepan sits beside me, one hand resting on his phone, expression closed.
Pavel is in the front passenger seat, speaking quietly into his earpiece with Andrei, who is posted across the road near the main entrance.
The van is still there. So are Lenkov’s men.
That’s the only reason I haven’t left.
“They’re not moving,” Pavel says, lowering his phone.
I look at the back gate. “They’re waiting for the families to clear.”
“Probably,” Pavel says.
Stepan glances toward the kindergarten windows. “That could take a while.”
“I can see that.”
He doesn’t answer. Wise man.
My mood has been bad since the moment I found out where the bastard had stashed the goods. It has worsened with every minute spent watching that painted fence glow under decorative lanterns while two thieves sit in a white van and wait to dig stolen cases out of a children’s garden.
I dislike many things. Careless men. Cheap lies. People who steal from me and then insult me by doing it so carelessly.
I hate men who use children as cover.
Pavel listens again, then turns slightly. “Andrei says it’s some kind of welcome program. Families, teachers, performances. He saw kids with paper leaves on their heads.”
Stepan looks at me. “Kindergarten event?”
“Does it really matter what’s going on inside?” Pavel says.
I keep my eyes on the gate.
Inside the compound, the program continues. The back of the building is quieter than the front, but I can still see movement through the classroom windows. Adults standing. Phones raised. Children gathered near a wall covered in colored paper.
A family evening. Of course.
Lenkov chose the one night when the building would not be empty.
Maybe he knew. Maybe he didn’t. Either way, the result is the same: six stolen cases sitting behind a playhouse while half of Marrowick claps for children learning to stand in rows.
Malik’s voice comes through Pavel’s earpiece, low enough that I catch only fragments.
Pavel says, “Malik says the man by the van is smoking again. No weapon visible.”
I ask, “Lenkov?”
Pavel listens. “Still inside the back gate. Malik saw him near the garden five minutes ago, then he moved behind the shed.”
“He’s checking whether he can dig.”
“Looks like it.”
“Tell Malik he doesn’t approach.”
Pavel repeats the order.
Stepan shifts beside me. “If Lenkov starts moving the cases while the program is still going?”
“We wait until he brings them outside the gate.”
“And if he takes them into the van?”
“Then we take the van after it leaves this street.”
Stepan nods once. He knows the rule. No shooting here. No loud takedown at the gate. No frightened parent grabbing a child and running because one of my men decided his impatience mattered more than a five-year-old’s safety.
I learned that rule before I inherited anything.
My father had many principles. Most were convenient, flexible, or useful only when someone was watching.
Mine are fewer and harder. Children do not get pulled into business.
Schools, hospitals, playgrounds, daycares—those places stay outside unless there is no other choice, and even then, the cost of stepping in must be heavier than the cost of waiting.
Tonight, waiting costs me patience.
That’s not enough.
A little girl runs past one of the side windows wearing a yellow dress that flashes under the lights. Another child follows more slowly, turning back toward someone I can’t see.
For no reason I want to examine, my chest tightens.
I look away. “Update me on Lenkov,” I say.
Pavel speaks into the earpiece, waits, then answers. “Still inside. Malik says he’s near the garden shed again. He has a tool bag.”
Stepan says, “He’ll try before the families leave.”
“He won’t finish,” I say.
“You sound sure.”
“I know fucks like him spook easily,” I say. And he probably knows we’re tailing him. This part I keep to myself. Something about the whole thing isn’t sitting right with me. There’s something I’m missing, but what?
My phone vibrates in my coat pocket. For a moment, I expect it to be one of the men, though most of them know not to contact me directly while Pavel is managing the line. I take it out anyway.
Unknown Number.
I go still before I can stop myself.
Stepan notices, because Stepan notices everything. He looks at the phone, then deliberately out the window.
I open the message.
A photo fills the screen. Two little girls stand side by side under bright classroom lights, hands linked between them.
One wears a yellow dress and a crooked paper crown, glitter on her cheek, smile wide and fearless.
The other is in a dark cardigan, chin lifted, trying very hard not to smile and failing at the corners.
They’re both small, maybe five, with dark curls and serious eyes that do not belong on children so young.
For a few seconds, the noise outside the car disappears.
I don’t understand why the picture has been sent to me.
Then I remember what she told me last night.
First day of kindergarten tomorrow.
Children. Her children. The woman from the number has children old enough to stand in a classroom with paper crowns and little proud faces.
My thumb rests on the edge of the screen.
I should close it. Instead, I stare.
The girl in yellow looks like trouble. The other looks like judgment. I have no idea why that thought comes so quickly or why it makes something uncomfortable move behind my ribs.
They’re beautiful.
That’s the first clear thought.
The second is colder.
She sent me their faces.
By accident, probably. No mother who has guarded herself for six years sends a stranger a picture of her children on purpose. She has always been careful. No full name. No address. No images. Even in her loneliest messages, she kept the real parts of her life behind locked doors.
This picture is a mistake. I know that.
I should ignore it.
Pavel turns halfway in his seat. “Pakhan.”
I don’t look up. “What?”
“Lenkov is moving.”
That pulls me back.
I lock the phone and put it face down on my knee, but the image remains behind my eyes: two girls, hands linked, one smiling, one trying not to.
“Where?” I ask.
Pavel listens, then says, “Garden shed. He’s crouched near the back-left corner. Malik can’t see his hands.”
“Families still inside?”
“Yes.”
“Then Malik stays where he is.”
Pavel repeats the order.
Stepan looks toward the kindergarten. “If Lenkov opens the ground now, he may expose the cases.”
“He still has to carry them out.”
“And if he has someone inside watching?”
“Then that man watches us do nothing until the children leave.”
Stepan gives a small nod.
My phone vibrates again. I look down despite myself.
Unknown Number: Sorry. Wrong chat.
There it is. The sensible thing. The explanation that should end the matter.
I should type, No problem. Or better, nothing. Let her have her mistake back. Let her close the thread, put the phone away, and return to her children without imagining my eyes on them longer than necessary.
My thumb moves over the keyboard.
I don’t type.
Instead, I unlock the screen again and look at the photo one more time. This time, I notice the wall behind them. Paper leaves. A classroom board. A banner cut off at the top: WELCOME FAMIL—
The same event.
My body goes still.
No. That is impossible.
I zoom in before I think better of it.
A painted mural is visible through a window behind the girls. Flowers on a fence. A sliver of a blue bird. The angle is wrong, blurry, incidental, but I have been watching that same painted fence for the last forty minutes from the service lane.
The children in the photo are here.
At Little Birch.
Tonight.
For one long second, all the pieces stay separate because the mind refuses what it does not want.
The woman from the number has twin girls starting kindergarten. A kindergarten program is happening inside the kindergarten where Lenkov buried my stolen cases. The picture she sent me was taken at this same event.
I don’t know her name. I don’t know her face. I have spent years keeping her separate from the life I live in blood and ledgers and men who die for smaller mistakes than this.
Now she’s somewhere inside the building. With her children.
While Lenkov is in the garden digging near a playhouse.
My grip tightens around the phone until the edges bite into my palm.
Stepan notices. “Ruslan?”
I look up at the kindergarten windows. There are too many people inside. Too many children. Too many parents standing with bags and coats and cupcakes, believing the evening is safe because the lights are warm and the teachers are smiling.
My phone vibrates a third time.
Unknown Number: Please delete it.
I read the words once. Then I close the message without replying.
Pavel says, “Lenkov is lifting something.”
The car seems to go quiet around me. I put the phone in my pocket and look at the painted wall beyond the fence. “What’s the status on Lenkov?”
“Malik can’t see him anymore, he has lost eyes,” Pavel says.