13. Dominik
DOMINIK
Ana is gone when I get home.
I’m late. I unlock the door and step inside. The room is dark. A small blue light burns in the corner near the shelf. It’s the router. Still powered. Still connected. The apartment is silent. The sight freezes me harder than any sound could.
I don’t move right away, don’t call her name. I listen. Nothing. No hum of movement. I hear nothing except my own breath.
I flick the light on and take the room in with one clean sweep. Nothing’s disturbed. No drawers pulled out. No chair knocked loose. The table is clear. The glasses are washed and drying. Her coat hangs straight on the hook, sleeves aligned, untouched.
That’s wrong.
If men had come for her, there would be damage somewhere. Force always leaves residue. A rushed hand. A misplaced object. A sign of resistance, even the kind that doesn’t make noise. This place has none of it. It’s left intact, and that reads like purpose.
I move deeper, bedroom, bathroom, closet. Her side of the bed is made. The spare bag is missing. The trash is empty.
My temples throb. I let the anger rise just long enough to feel its shape, then force it down and settle it deep in my gut where it can sit and wait. I’ll need it steady, controlled.
She didn’t trust me to hold the line. That cuts. The council pulled me out with a fake summons and didn’t touch her, and she still vanished. That cuts deeper. If they dragged her out while I was gone, I would’ve had a name to go after. They didn’t.
What gets to me most is the lack of words. I check for a note. I scroll my phone slowly, looking for a message I might’ve missed while I was out, anything that says she’ll be back. There’s nothing.
I start opening drawers and cupboards. I pull clothes from the wardrobe, hers and mine, let them fall where they land. I check the sofa. Strip the bed down to the mattress. Nothing, no note, no pattern. No trace she didn’t mean to leave behind.
I splash cold water on my face and grip the edge of the sink until the pulse in my head evens out. Then I look at the apartment again, not searching now, just reading it.
The more I trace the order of things, the clearer it gets. This wasn’t rushed. It was layered.
She didn’t leave in a moment. She left in stages. The timing was chosen. The silence too. She gave me nothing to chase and nothing to interrupt her plan.
That changes everything. Because this isn’t a disappearance meant to be solved. It’s a move meant to be understood.
My eyes go where she keeps her chargers. They're missing. She made sure I’d see the absence. Ana didn’t run from the board. She stepped onto it.
I don’t like anyone moving pieces without me.
I lock the apartment without looking back. The drive is fast. Markov’s mansion still stands lit and guarded. The men at the gate open it as soon as they see me. No one stops me, because stopping me isn’t their job.
I leave the car under the portico and keep walking. I take the stairs two at a time. Halfway up, a man steps into my path. He’s new to the house, and he thinks blocking me will earn him points.
“Dominik,” he says, hands out.
I hit him. Quick, flat, hard. Bone cracks. He drops, blood already in his mouth. A tooth rolls across marble. I don’t stop.
Irina rushes out of the myriad rooms at the sound and stops at the top of the stairs. Her breath catches. Her eyes are wide, stunned. Then she moves, fast, coming down toward me.
“Please,” she says. “Come.”
I follow.
The hallway is too familiar. The door to Ana’s old room is shut. Irina opens it, steps in, waits for me.
Her hands shake. She pretends they don’t.
“Talk,” I say.
Her jaw sets. “That man—Ivan—he’s council-backed. This won’t stay small.”
I say nothing.
She folds.
“She asked me not to watch,” Irina says. “So I didn’t.”
“What did she take?”
“Papers, jewelry, cash. I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“And then?”
“She left. Out the back.”
Like she planned it.
I look hard at Irina. She doesn’t lower her eyes. If she’s lying, she’s doing it well. It’s a half-truth. She knows more. But she didn’t run. She didn’t warn me. She stayed where she belonged.
“Did anyone touch her?” I ask.
“No.”
“Did anyone follow?”
“No.”
“Did she ask about me?”
Irina hesitates. Just long enough.
“She asked if you’d stop looking,” Irina says. “If you understood.”
I turn away for a moment before she can read what that does to me. Then I tell her to keep it contained. All of it. One loose word and Ana stays gone for good. Her head snaps up. Fear shows before she can hide it. She nods once, hard.
“And don’t vanish,” I add. “If I need you and you’re not here, that becomes a problem.”
“Yes,” she says. Not loud. Steady enough.
I leave her where she stands and take the long corridor to Markov’s library. I don’t sit when I enter. I send for Karpov and wait by the desk. He’s handled surveillance and entry logs since my time, and he still does.
Karpov shows up when summoned.
As soon as the door closes, I step in close. Close enough that my breath touches his face when I speak. My fingers catch his shirt, not hard, just enough to remind him I could.
“There’s a problem inside the house,” I say.
His face doesn’t move. He eases my hand away like it’s nothing new.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.
“I think you do.” I breathe harder on the last word. “Someone used Markov’s people to get close to Ana yesterday, and they did it without an order.” I let it sit.
His face goes red. He steps back.
“I haven’t seen Mrs. Markova since Mr. Markov’s funeral,” he says. “I haven’t heard from her.”
He isn't lying. I still need information.
Karpov turns toward the door. I move around the desk and block his path.
“I’m not finished. No one leaves until I am.”
He holds the silence. I watch the rise and fall of his chest.
“If not you,” I say, “then it was someone. Walk me through the names.”
He gives me staff, shifts, assignments. He gives me who handles which wing, who drives which car, who was hired after the cremation, and who the old ones are, cleaners, drivers, contractors. Every person with a key. Every uniform. Anyone with access.
“If I find one unauthorized tail, I don’t call a meeting. I start cutting people out of the chain,” he says.
“Who stayed from the old regime?” I ask.
He gives me more names. None of them catch.
“And her,” I say. “Who had access to her?”
“Two maids. One attendant. Tailors when needed. Doctors approved through the council.”
“Who did she see most?”
“Mostly women. Visits to fill the hours.”
“Anyone else?”
His voice drops. “Her driver would know.”
“Call him.”
The driver is old, careful with memory. He talks about Ana like someone you respect, not someone you confess over.
He says she went places that required patience.
Florists, shoemakers, seamstresses, and houses where men spoke softly and watched her longer than they should.
He adds, almost casually, that she often asked to be dropped early.
Said she was walking the rest to the phone store or library. Small errands that didn’t need company.
Karpov’s brow creases. “Phone store,” he says. “You mean Andrei’s shop.”
The driver nods. That’s enough.
I leave without a word. Irina stands near the door, white as paper. I don’t look at her.
Andrei’s shop sits on a clean street, glass front, neat displays, an assistant smiling like this is a normal day.
I push past him and go through the back.
Andrei turns, eyes pale and startled. He tries to bolt.
I catch him, hit him once, not hard. He slips, falls, ends up on a stool shaking. One more slap silences him.
“She asked for a name,” he says. “Not a passport. Just something clean.”
He gives me the name.
I memorize it and leave.
I don’t stay. I close it, lock it, and leave it exactly the way she meant me to see it.
I check into a hotel under a name I’ve already burned once before and don’t bother unpacking.
I spend the night going through old logistics contracts, drivers assigned to secondary routes, men who knew how to pick someone up without being noticed.
When I can’t stare at paper anymore, I go down to the bar.
The bar’s on the first floor. It smells of old smoke and warm alcohol. Men crowd the tables, shoulders turned inward, conversations kept close to the glass.
Pyotr sits near the back, loud, glass in hand, one leg hooked around the table like he owns it. He’s a mid-level council fixer, a handler with too many stories and a mouth that doesn’t know when to close.
He says her name first. He brings up widows who don’t listen, and women who walk away from “protection”, and he says they need to be taught better. He smiles as he says it, slow and ugly, and he keeps his eyes on me the whole time.
“Pyotr,” I say. “Watch it.”
He scoffs. “You’re afraid? It’s the truth.” He turns to the others. “He’s afraid of the truth.” Some smile. Most don’t.
“You’re drunk.”
He stands and swings. It’s clumsy, and late.
My shoulder takes the hit. His glass tips and shatters.
I don’t wait. I grab him and drive his head into the table edge.
The crack is loud enough to shut the room down.
He drops and doesn’t rise. Blood runs out from under his ear and stains the floor.
Chairs drag back. Voices die halfway through sentences.
Nobody moves, because everyone understands what they just saw.
By the time the first man moves, I’m already at the door, coat in hand, pace steady.
I leave cash on the bar, enough to cover what I drank and the trouble, and I don’t wait around for anyone to decide what they saw.
Outside, I call the hotel desk and tell them I’m checking out early, then I hang up before they can ask questions.
I drive back to my apartment because it’s the only place left that still feels like a fixed point, even when everything else keeps moving.
Morning’s already in the streets when I get there. Before I go inside, I cross to the bakery, order a coffee I don’t want, and keep my voice casual.