9. Dominik
DOMINIK
After a hit like that, the city doesn’t explode.
It keeps moving, and the people who run things make small changes that matter.
A number that used to pick up goes dead.
A gate that used to open makes you wait.
A supplier suddenly “can’t help”. A car you don’t recognize sits on the same street twice.
I watch for those things because they tell me whether they’ve clocked what happened and started closing access.
I switch us out of the first car on the edge of town and into the second one Maksim sent for me, a beat-up Lada Niva that doesn’t stand out.
Once we’re inside, I tell Ana to buckle in, then I pull the blanket from the back corner and cover her legs, and I tuck it tight so it won’t slide when we take turns hard. The driver glances back, waits for my nod, and pulls out fast.
I sit beside Ana and keep my eyes on the mirrors while the engine pushes through traffic and heads for the highway without easing up.
My mind keeps returning to the breach. Did I make mistakes?
A camera could be placed at an angle I didn’t account for.
A mirror catching the car’s plate from a window I didn’t see.
It was a rental, the plate swapped, parked three blocks away.
By now, one of Maksim’s crew has picked it up and moved it, which means it won’t be sitting where I left it if anyone goes looking. Still.
I don’t hear a tail or catch eyes on us yet, but that doesn’t mean no one’s watching.
And that isn’t the only thing sitting wrongly.
Boris told me he’d text once the corridor cleared. I sent our confirmation code. Nothing comes back, no acknowledgment, no clipped response, not even the usual checkmark. Just silence where there used to be speed. That absence sits wrongly, heavier than a refusal would have.
An hour later, I try Yuri for back routes.
The call rings until it dies. A moment after, his number goes dark on the registry.
I ask the driver to stay on course anyway, and we head for a corridor I’ve used since before Markov learned how to smile in public.
That’s when I see something sitting across the route.
An unmarked roadblock. Men standing loose and watchful, no insignia, no uniforms, just bodies angled to stop anyone who tries to slide past without inspection. A few streets beyond, a patrol sets up a paper check, stopping cars with a focus that’s got nothing to do with routine.
None of it draws attention. Nothing announces itself. It just firmly closes doors on an easy exit.
“What now?” the driver asks.
I don’t tell the driver to speed past.
“Signal,” I say. “Then pull right. Like you’re tired and late and don’t want trouble.”
He does and keeps his indicator on. He eases the Lada toward the shoulder before anyone has to wave him down.
I lean closer to Ana without looking at her. “Head down,” I say. “Don’t move unless I tell you. Whatever happens next, you don’t speak.”
She doesn’t argue. She adjusts the blanket, tucks her chin, and disappears into a corner. One of the men breaks off and walks toward us, gravel crunching under his boots. His eyes flick over the windshield, the driver, then land on me.
“Problem?” I ask.
He stops a step short of me, close enough to smell cigarette smoke. “Routine,” he says. “Papers?”
I pull my wallet, flip it open without handing it over, and let him see a name that isn’t mine and an age that makes sense. “We’re late,” I say. “Unless you want to explain to my wife why she’s missing her appointment.”
His eyes flick to the corner, the blanket, the shape underneath it.
“Where are you headed?” he asks.
I give him a safehouse address I’ve planned to abandon.
“Road’s closed.”
“Since when?”
“Since now.”
Behind him, another car gets waved through without stopping.
I smile thinly. “Then we’ll turn around.”
He watches me for a long second, then steps back. “Do that.”
The driver pulls out without rushing.
Two blocks later, I say, “Left. Now.”
He turns without signaling, sliding us into a narrow service road that runs behind a line of warehouses.
“That safehouse is burned,” the driver says.
“Yes,” I reply. “And so is the next one.”
I lean forward, voice dropping. “Take us south to the old industrial sectors.”
The driver accelerates, cutting deeper into streets that don’t show up on tourist maps or traffic feeds.
“Where are we going?” Ana asks, voice flat and dry.
“I’ll decide once we clear this area,” is all I say.
I run the backup list in my head, cutting fast. Check distance, access, exposure. I only need one location that will hold for twelve hours without drawing attention. After that, we move again.
The road thins out. Ana falls asleep somewhere past the city line. Her weight settles against me. I don’t wake her. I keep an arm around her to hold her in place when the car shifts.
Too many of my contacts have gone silent. That doesn’t sit well. Still, panic wastes energy and rage makes mistakes. I break it down into steps and keep the emotion out of it so it doesn’t interfere.
A secure site was breached without noise. The men stationed to hold Ana were either killed or taken out cleanly. No signals went up. No bodies turned up outside official ground. There was no ransom and no rival gang stepping forward to claim it. I know how the council will see that kind of absence.
It only happens when the person responsible knows the system well enough to move through it without triggering a response.
The more I go over it, the clearer it gets.
This isn’t disorder spreading. It’s control being applied.
The council doesn’t wait for proof before it acts.
They watch sequences, timing, and proximity, and they draw conclusions from that.
I was closest to Ana, already flagged as too involved, already the one man who wouldn’t sit still if something went wrong.
So they do what they always do. My access narrows. Routes close without notice. Familiar names stop working. They don’t make accusation, and they say nothing directly. They let the situation settle and watch how I respond once I realize the space around me is closing.
As if to seal my conclusion, Boris sends a message through a third channel, clean and distant, with no explanation and no apology attached. Can’t help you anymore. That’s it.
Greg checks in an hour later, not with questions but with a status update, because he knows better than to ask once things start moving against someone. His decoy vehicles did what they were meant to do, feeding cameras the wrong faces and plates that won’t lead anywhere useful.
It gives you time, he texts, understanding that time isn’t the same thing as safety and not knowing that the Bratva is already taking some of it back by closing roads and forcing choices.
Pavel sends a single message from an unfamiliar number, no greeting attached. I know it’s him from the content. Two watchers pulled back. One replaced.
That points to observation, not pursuit. What sits worse is Yuri going dark. That line doesn’t drop unless someone wants it contained. Ana wakes with a small breath and a slow blink, like she’s trying not to startle the moment.
She doesn’t ask where we are or how long we’ve been moving.
She looks at my face, takes in what she needs to, then turns her gaze out the window.
The sky is pale, the first light before dawn, thin and gray.
The driver eases the Lada Niva into a lane and stops in front of a low-rise building, the location I sent him minutes ago.
The apartment exists on paper as an inheritance dispute no one wants to resolve.
It belongs to everyone and no one, which means people come and go without scrutiny.
I have a key, a spare handed over by a tenant who owed me once and remembers it.
It stays on my ring. The neighbors are worn down by routine, focused on work and noise and getting through their days.
They don’t track faces because too many pass through this building to make watching worth the effort.
It still isn’t a place to keep her long. No fixed location ever is.
I leave Ana with a phone that rings only one way and give her instructions that sound like suggestions, paced and casual.
She’ll remember them without writing down.
Then I step back out. Logistics come next.
Money needs to move, paths need to open.
There’s no point reaching for Oleg yet. If he’s smart, he’s already gone dark.
I watch for an ATM and spot one, the display outside showing it’s open. Inside the kiosk, I slide my card and wait. The transfer is shut down before it clears, a flat denied blinking back at me. No error code. Just refusal. They aren’t trying to hide it.
I call a banker who once owed me a favor. The line rings twice before someone else answers, a voice I don’t recognize. Suddenly, the transfer needs approval, as if oversight is a new concern. He sounds almost apologetic as he explains it.
Back on the street, I make a loop to the grocery store for bread, a carton of milk, butter, bananas.
On the walk, I call an old fixer in Rostov.
He picks up and speaks politely, tells me he knows nothing.
The pause between his words tells me enough.
He isn’t lying. He’s making sure he stays out of it.
I try another contact, someone who once called me brother. His wife answers instead. She sounds steady, rehearsed. She tells me he’s out of town, and she doesn’t know when he’ll be back. I don’t press. There’s nothing left to ask for.
I make the call I’ve been avoiding, the one that trades courtesy for accuracy. I reach Gleb. He’s semi-retired. That means he’s too useful to kill and no longer protected.
Gleb answers on the second ring.
“You’ve been busy,” he says.
He lets the silence sit. He always knew how to make people fill it.
“They logged the operation,” he says. “Speed, method, where the bodies fell, and where they didn’t. Whoever ran it knew exactly what he was doing.”
“I know,” I say.
“They didn’t need a name,” he continues. “But they settled on one, anyway.”
I don’t interrupt.
“Your proximity to the widow has been reclassified,” he says. “You’re no longer a tolerated complication. You’re being treated as a problem that affects balance.”
That wording matters. It means they’ve stopped debating.
“There’s a proposal moving,” he adds. “Off the book. No vote yet. Just people lining up where they usually do.”
“To remove me,” I say.
“To limit you,” he corrects. “Access first. Influence after. If that doesn’t work, then they’ll decide what comes next.”
“Anyone pushing back?” I ask.
“Not out loud,” he says. “And not for free. If you listen and follow instructions, they might leave you standing. If you don’t, they won’t.”
I thank him without warmth and end the call.
I don’t return to Ana. I move instead, changing locations like cafes, late-night markets, a bus depot, touching ground I haven’t in years, watching who flinches and who doesn’t. Maksim’s exit vehicle gets burned, stripped, and forgotten. Another favor paid forward, another thread cut clean.
By midnight, I’m alone with the truth I’ve been circling all day.
Leaving her won’t save me. I stand in a room with no windows and I think about Markov, about how he believed visibility was power and never understood that endurance mattered more.
I think about Ana, about how her refusal to bend reads as a threat.
They don’t want her married. Marriage is only a way to contain her.
And they don’t want me anywhere near the decision.
I check my phone. Another contact goes dark. Another route compromised. The board is clearing space. Good. If they’re moving this carefully, it means they’re afraid of what happens if I don’t fall fast.
I sit down, not to rest, but to plan with the understanding that the rules I lived by no longer apply. The council has decided to cut me off systematically. They’re waiting until I’m out in the open, with no clean way through.