Chapter 33
ELENA
The van stops, and someone pulls the door open, and the cold hits me before the light does.
I’m on my feet before they tell me to be, my hands still pressed flat against my stomach, because I have decided somewhere in the last forty minutes that I’m not going to let them drag me anywhere.
If I’m moving, I’m going to move on my own feet.
I step out of the van onto wet concrete, and I look at what is around me.
A building. Industrial, low, the kind of structure that doesn’t advertise its purpose from the outside. Water somewhere close, I can smell it, brackish, cold. A fence line.
Two men behind me, two ahead, none of them looking at me with anything resembling personal interest. They are doing a job. I am the job. That’s the only useful thing I know right now, so I hold on to it, and I keep moving.
They take me inside through a side door, a corridor with bare concrete walls, fluorescent lighting that flickers once as we pass under it. My shoes are loud on the floor. Nobody else’s are.
We stop at a door, and one of the men opens it, and I go in because the alternative is being pushed in, and I am not giving them that.
The room is small. A table, two chairs, a window with frosted glass that tells me nothing about what is outside it.
A smell of damp concrete. I sit in the nearest chair without being told to because standing is going to cost me energy I can’t afford to spend, and I press both hands against my stomach, and I breathe.
The baby.
I close my eyes for three seconds and I think about the heartbeat on the monitor two days ago, fast, steady, filling Dr. Park’s office.
I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth the way she taught me and I tell myself the baby is fine, the baby has not been harmed, the pain from this morning was round ligament pain and it will pass and the baby is fine.
Mara’s scream.
I open my eyes.
I look at the frosted window, and I breathe, and I don’t let myself finish that thought because finishing it will take me somewhere I can’t come back from right now, and I need to come back from everything that happens in this room, so I press my hands against my stomach, and I look at the wall, and I wait.
The man who comes in is not what I expect.
He’s maybe fifty, slight, with the kind of face that belongs in an accountant’s office, wire-rimmed glasses, a dark coat, and shoes that have been recently polished.
He sits down across from me, and he puts his hands flat on the table, and he looks at me with an expression of genuine regret that makes my skin crawl more than anything else has so far.
“Mrs. Petrov,” he says. “I want to begin by telling you that you are not going to be harmed. You have my word on that.”
I look at him.
“We understand your situation,” he says. “We are not unreasonable people. This does not have to be a difficult conversation.”
“Then let me go,” I say.
He tilts his head slightly. “We need one thing from you. One piece of information. You give it to us, you go home today. Your husband gets you back, everyone moves forward.” He folds his hands together on the table.
“There is a person inside the Petrov organization who has been coordinating with one of our contacts. Passing information, facilitating certain arrangements. We need that person’s name. ”
I look at him, and I try to understand what he is asking me.
“You were Roman Petrov’s personal secretary for two years,” he says.
“You managed his correspondence, his schedule, his communications. You know the names of every person with access to his operational infrastructure.” He pauses.
“We are not asking you to betray your husband. We are asking you for a name that, frankly, you already know.”
I look at the table between us.
I think about two years of correspondence.
Names on documents. Meeting schedules. The men who came through Roman’s office, the calls I routed, the emails I managed.
I think about what I actually know versus what this man believes I know, the gap between the view from outside a door and the view from inside a room, and I understand something with total clarity.
I do not have what he wants.
I know schedules. I know which council members take their calls before noon. I know who sends flowers to Roman’s office on his birthday and who doesn’t. I know the names on the legitimate side of his world, the side that appears on letterhead.
I don’t know what happens underneath it. Roman has kept me outside that world deliberately for two years, and I didn’t fully understand why until right now, sitting in this room across from a man who believes I know everything and would not believe me if I told him I do not.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
He looks at me with the patient expression of someone who expected this answer and is not bothered by it. “Mrs. Petrov—”
“I managed his calendar,” I say. “I booked his restaurants. I confirmed his meetings. I don’t know anything about the operational side of his organization because he didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask.”
“You are his wife.”
“I was his secretary before I was his wife. For two years. He kept those worlds separate, and so did I.”
He looks at me for a long moment. The regretful expression doesn’t go anywhere. He uncrosses his hands, crosses them again, and looks at the table between us. “I’m going to give you some time to think,” he says. “We are not in a hurry.”
He stands up.
“I’m pregnant,” I say.
He stops.
“I’m almost twelve weeks. Whatever you need from me, whatever you think I know, I need you to understand that there is a child involved in this room.” I hold his gaze. “I am asking you to factor that into whatever comes next.”
He looks at me for a moment. Something moves across his face that is not the regret from before, something less rehearsed.
“You will not be harmed,” he says again. Then he goes out, and the door closes, and I hear the lock turn.
I sit with both hands on my stomach, and I look at the frosted window, and I breathe.
I think about Roman in that council session this morning, his phone going off, the moment he understands.
I think about what he does when he understands.
I have watched this man handle crises for two years from the outside, and I know what his face looks like when a decision has been made, the stillness that means he has already moved past the problem and into the solution.
He is coming.
I don’t know how I know this with the certainty I know it.
I just know it the way I know the sound of his footsteps in the corridor and the weight of his attention from across a room.
He’s coming because that is who he is, and I’m here because of who he is, and those two things are the same fact from different angles.
I press my hands against my stomach.
I breathe.
Outside the room, something changes. A sound further in the building, muffled, voices moving. Then footsteps, more than before, multiple sets, moving fast in a direction I can’t map from this chair.
I sit up straighter.
The footsteps stop.
Then, from somewhere deeper in the building, a sound I cannot identify. Something heavy. Something that makes the floor under my chair vibrate once, briefly, and go still.
I press my hands flat against my stomach, and I stare at the door, and I wait.