7. Anton
ANTON
I wake to cold sheets and an empty hand.
For one disoriented second, I stay still, eyes open to the dark line of the ceiling and the weak morning light under the curtains.
The pillow still holds the shallow shape of where Sofiya slept. The blanket is folded back. I push up fast, my eyes moving over the chair, the sofa, the console by the wall. The room gives me nothing back.
Last night, her clothes were everywhere. I could tell you exactly where her bra landed, where her panties caught on the edge of the rug, where her top hit the floor near the window. None of that means a thing now.
Something hard drags through my chest.
I look again anyway. Her trousers and shoes are gone. The space by the door is empty now. Everything looks back at me clean and still, like I’m the idiot for expecting otherwise.
I swing my legs off the bed, grab the first pair of trousers in reach, and pull them on without turning on the light. I grab my phone from the bedside table and think of making a call. It’d be easy to find where she ran.
Something makes me stop.
Women don’t usually leave my rooms before I wake. Not after a night like that. I don’t let the next thought finish itself. I drop the phone back onto the table harder than I need to and look toward the door instead.
I open the door and step into the private corridor barefoot and half-dressed, already hating that I need the cameras to tell me what I should know for myself.
At the far end, one of the night attendants straightens the second he sees me.
He knows who I am. Hotels built around private suites, coded lifts, concierge service, and surveillance sell a certain kind of importance.
Men pay well to feel insulated. They pay even better to feel recognized without being watched too openly.
So when one of those men walks into the corridor half-dressed in the morning, rough with old stubble and bad sleep, it means trouble.
“Who left this floor in the last hour?” I ask.
His eyes dip once, take in my state, then jump back up. “A woman, sir.”
No shit.
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Which exit?”
He swallows. “Private lift.”
I nod. “How long ago?”
“Approximately twenty-five minutes.”
That’s enough time to disappear into a city like Prague if she already knew where she was going.
“Footage. Now.”
He moves quickly, speaking fast into the earpiece at his collar.
I go back into the suite, drag on a shirt, leave half the buttons undone, and call downstairs while I shove my feet into my boots. By the time I cross to the television, the corridor footage is already coming through.
Sofiya steps out of my room dressed, composed, hair fixed, bag over her shoulder. She walks to the lift, looks up once, and then vanishes. I hit the table once with the flat of my hand.
I replay the clip twice, then once more. After that, it keeps replaying in my head on its own.
In her wake, there’s a total absence of familiarity. No note folded onto the table, no soft apology in a woman’s hand, not even a message left on the hotel line. Just the clean outline of a choice made and carried through.
I’m not a man who loses control of a room, a target, or a woman once she has stepped close enough to matter. I don’t chase every skirt that looks back at me twice or romanticize one night. That isn’t the problem.
The problem is that she came into my bed carrying all that sharp little Leonidov arrogance, matched me stroke for stroke, fell asleep in my arms, and then slipped out before sunrise like I was just another door she needed to get through.
I call the front desk. “Did the woman from my floor request a car?”
A beat, then keyboard clicks. “No, sir.”
“Did she leave a message?”
“No.”
I end the call and button the rest of my shirt one-handed. I stop at the edge of the bed and look down at the sheets we twisted up together last night. Part of me had been darkly pleased the moment she came to me at the club.
A Leonidov woman choosing my bed in Prague felt like a private win, a small insult aimed straight at the family that had spent years poisoning freight, tribute, and every ugly adjustment between our houses.
Waking up alone turns that satisfaction sour fast.
Sofiya’s father was the man who kept the Leonidov empire running. He buried dirty routes under respectable business until people like me had to waste months pulling truth out of accounts designed to look boring. Men died because of structures that men like him made possible.
And now his daughter comes into my city, takes my mouth, my bed, my hands all over her, and leaves without so much as a note. I’m almost entirely insulted, but partly amused.
She’s playing a good game, and I like games.
I call Kolya. He’s the man I bring when a job might need force, a second car, or someone who can keep his mouth shut while the room changes shape. He came to Prague with me for the Pavel Hruby business and stayed out of sight until I called him.
He answers on the first ring. “Anton.”
“Get up.”
A beat passes, and then he clears his voice so it won’t sound as groggy. “Problem?” He sounds awake already.
“I need tabs on a woman.” He was in the bar that night, folded into the shadows where I left him, and he saw enough. He saw me walk over to Sofiya, and he must have seen her leave with me.
“Don’t,” I add before he says something.
“I wasn’t going to. In fact…” He pauses just long enough to let it sink in. “I think I have something you’ll like.”
I stifle a groan. “Say it.”
He coughs slightly. “It’s about Maks Leonidov and that girl who was with you last night.”
Hmm. I recall Sofiya looking uncomfortable at the mention of her cousin. “What about him?”
“One of our Moscow people pushed something over this morning. Quiet inquiry only. No official family bulletin or public noise, just old enforcement lines being asked careful questions.”
“About what?”
“A woman.”
I go still as Kolya says, “Maks wants Sofiya Leonidova found.”