10. Anton
ANTON
Three weeks ago
I get back to Moscow with her still in my head, and that irritates me more than the flight, the backlog, or the fact that half my phone is already full of people wanting answers before I’ve taken my coat off.
Sofiya Leonidova should’ve stayed a good memory and a bad decision, but she keeps showing up everywhere.
In the car from the airport, I catch myself thinking about her mouth, the line of her throat, the way she looked against the hotel glass with her hair half wrecked and how her eyes shone when I had my hand between her legs.
Then I think about the way she left, and my mood improves just enough to get interesting.
I almost laugh.
A Leonidov woman came into my bed, took what she wanted, and slipped out before dawn like she’d won something.
That has teeth.
Most women don’t leave me with anything except the memory of how they sounded when I was done with them.
Sofiya left me with a black mood, a wrecked bed, and the irritating need to see what she does next.
That would be enough on its own, but the family name wrapped around her makes it better and worse at the same time.
Leonidovs and Reznikovs have spent years circling each other through damaged business, patched truces, and old blood nobody bothered to forget.
Their side likes clean fronts, expensive rooms, and paperwork polished enough to pass for civilization.
Our side prefers fewer decorations and better enforcement.
We still touch the same freight, the same ports, the same money, and every time one side gets ambitious, the old mess starts breathing again.
So yes, I noticed Sofiya because she was Leonidov.
I kept looking because she was beautiful, she was built like trouble in a fitted black top, she had the kind of face men remember after one glance, and she looked back at me like she knew better and still wanted to see what would happen.
That part was honest, but the rest got uglier after Prague.
I tell myself I’m looking for her because I don’t like being used, and there’s some truth in that.
I don’t enjoy waking up alone after a woman has taken my time, my room, and a very satisfying amount of my attention.
I enjoy it less when she belongs to the wrong family and leaves me wondering what game she thought she was playing.
But if I’m being honest, and I usually am when the room is empty, it’s not only about the insult.
I want her found because I can still feel her under my hands, I keep seeing her when I close my eyes, and the thought of her vanishing somewhere beyond my reach annoys me in a way that starts low and keeps climbing.
She made herself into a chase, and now I want to see how far she thinks she can run.
By the time the car pulls up at the river house, Kolya is already on the steps with a folder in one hand and that expression he wears when he knows something will either amuse me or make the day more expensive. “You look rested,” he jokes.
I take the folder from him and start walking. “You look alive. Keep that streak going.”
He falls into step beside me. “There’s more freight noise.”
I glance sideways at him. “There’s always more freight noise.”
“This one’s Leonidov.”
That gets my attention properly.
We go inside, and I keep moving while I read. Baltic references. Finnish transfer points. Subtle pressure around older broker relays. Nothing loud enough to drag into open war, but enough to suggest somebody inside Leonidov freight is pushing movement through channels that aren’t supposed to exist.
“Maks again?” I ask.
Kolya nods once. “His name is coming up too often.”
It doesn’t surprise me. Maks has the kind of ambition that makes other men everyone’s problem. He smiles well, talks cleanly, and everything I’ve heard about him suggests he’d burn a route, a cousin, or an old truce if he thought the smoke would look like power.
We head straight to one of the smaller workrooms off the main office, and I toss the folder onto the table. “Give me the short version.”
Kolya opens another file. “Renewed instability on Leonidov lines. Off-book movement. Pressure from Maks’s side of the family. Quiet inquiries through private drivers and older house men.”
“That’s still freight.”
He flips a page and slides it across. “This isn’t.”
I look down. There isn’t much in it, which is why it’s more interesting. It’s about a missing woman. The questions are careful and there’s no formal notice or public family concern. It’s curated pressure that men love to use when they want to find somebody discreetly.
The corner of my mouth lifts. “Sofiya,” I say.
Kolya watches my face. “So you know she’s trouble now.”
“I knew enough before.”
He frowns at me. “Apparently, not enough.”
That earns him a look, but he survives it because he’s one of my oldest men and on a good day, close enough to being my only friend.
I read the page again, then the next. Her disappearance overlaps too neatly with the route instability. They aren’t trying to coax her home, smooth over some scandal, and put her back in a silk dress beside the right chandelier.
They’re tightening around her, and that means she knows something worth hiding or she took something worth killing for.
I see her at the bar again, all that beautiful control pulled tight over nerves she was hiding better than most men could.
I see the way she watched the room before she let me close and the way she came with me anyway.
I see the way she left before dawn, fast and clean, and suddenly, it stops looking like arrogance and starts looking like timing.
“She was already running,” I say.
Kolya shrugs. “Looks that way.”
I lean back in the chair and smile without warmth. “That makes her night in Prague even funnier.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Funny.”
“She had half her family probably closing in around her, and she still found time to climb into my bed.”
Kolya says nothing. Smart man.
I tap the page once. “They’re not chasing her because she bruised someone’s pride. Maks wants her found because she can hurt him.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
I think about Maks, about his name sitting too close to hidden freight movement and side channels, and about Sofiya with those cool eyes and that very expensive body walking around with something risky enough to make her own people hunt her.
That lands well.
I already disliked Maks. Men like him are bad for business because they confuse appetite with intelligence and escalation with strength. Now I dislike him more because he’s confirmed what I thought he was, which is reckless enough to kick old blood awake if it helps him climb.
And somewhere in the middle of his mess is Sofiya.
Enemy blood. Gorgeous. Stupid enough to bait me. Smart enough to leave. Hunted enough to make it all more interesting. Private irritation and Brotherhood business finally sit in the same chair.
I get up, walk to the window, then turn back to the table and pick up her file again.
There isn’t much in it yet, but there’s enough.
Enough to know she isn’t hiding because she got embarrassed after a good night.
Enough to know she didn’t leave me because she was bored.
Enough to know she may be running for her life, which should make this less entertaining and somehow makes it better.
“She used you,” Kolya says.
I look at him and laugh once. “Maybe.”
“She left.”
“Yes,” I say, and I’m still smiling. “That’s why this has legs.”
He watches me for a second. “You’re taking this like a game.”
“No,” I say. “I’m taking it like a hunt.”
And that’s where it gets good.
At that moment, Kolya’s phone rings and he glances at the screen, then at me, and that tiny shift in his expression is enough. He steps away to answer, keeps it brief, then comes back already holding the phone out. “Prague contact,” he says. “Says it’s credible.”
I take the phone. “Talk.”
A man I know from the freight side answers without greeting. “We picked up movement tied to the Leonidov girl’s alias trail like you asked. Not confirmed on paper, but strong enough to move on. Budapest.”
Every part of me goes still in the useful way. “How strong?”
“Strong enough that I’d bet money. Small shipping office, cash wages, rotating rooms, and a woman matching her build and age moving under false documents. She’s been careful, but not invisible.”
I smile slightly. “Nobody’s invisible.”
Kolya watches my face while I listen. The contact keeps going. “There’s more. Separate line lit up an hour ago. Leonidov men are asking questions there too, and they’re doing it quietly through private security and older drivers. Not police, not open channels. Family work.”
That wipes the smile off my mouth. “How many?”
“Enough to make the city bad for her fast.”
I end the call and hand the phone back.
Kolya folds his arms. “If it’s real, we should put it upstairs first and get a cleaner picture before you move.”
“It is real.”
“You don’t know that yet.”
I grab my coat from the back of the chair and start for the door. “I know enough.”
He follows at once. “Anton.”
I keep walking. “Get me the Budapest file, every freight contact we’ve got within reach, and a car downstairs in two minutes.”
He catches up beside me. “This is exactly how men walk into other people’s traps.”
I hit the corridor, don’t break stride, and button my coat as we move. “Then Maks should’ve built a better one.”
Kolya exhales hard through his nose. “Stop just a second.”
I pause at the stair landing and look at him.
“A Leonidov woman got into my bed, vanished before dawn, and now half her family is hunting her across borders because she knows something worth burying. She’s in Budapest, they’re closing in, and I’m not staying here while slower men hold a meeting about it. ”
His face blanches, but he knows better than to waste another second trying to block me. By the time we hit the ground floor, I’m already pulling up routes in my head.
If Sofiya wants to keep running, she’s going to have to do it with me closing the distance.