16. Sofiya
SOFIYA
The first few days in Anton’s home turn out to be the hardest. Even though I know my baby and I are safer here than outside, I can’t thank him. The expensiveness I’m surrounded by is ridiculous to the point of being revolting. And there are men everywhere I go.
But being who I am, I do my best to learn everything within what limits I have. By the third day I’ve got timing, patterns, and one good chance.
Anton disappears into his office with Kolya and two older men I haven’t seen before. One guard shifts off the private elevator post. Another takes a call near the far hall and walks three steps farther.
I move through the service corridor, cut behind the library wall, slip past the blind patch near the kitchen corner, and reach the private lift before anyone says my name.
The panel lights when I touch it.
Hope is a stupid feeling. It arrives anyway and dies when the screen goes red. Locked.
Frustrated, I hit it again. Still red.
Anton’s warm voice reaches me lazily from behind before I can decide whether to swear or smash the panel with the nearest object. “Having fun?”
I turn slowly.
He’s standing at the mouth of the corridor in dark trousers and a black shirt with the sleeves rolled, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his phone. His face is unreadable, but his mouth is doing something that suggests my irritation has improved his afternoon.
I bare my teeth at him. “You locked it remotely.”
He cocks his head. “Yes.”
I could hit him right about now. “That’s sick.”
“No,” he answers with a little chuckle that enrages me even more. “It’s efficient.”
I push off the panel and head for the sitting room before he can decide to physically steer me there. He follows anyway, and by the time I make it to the sofa, he catches my elbow, turns me, and sits me down with a firm hand on my shoulder. It isn’t hard enough to hurt, but it makes the point.
He stands over me. “Are you trying to prove something, or are you actually this reckless?”
I look up at him. “I’m trying not to let you settle me into your life like a decorative problem.”
His eyes narrow just enough to show I hit something. “Decorative isn’t the word I’d use.”
“No, you’d probably choose something more proprietary.”
After sparing a long look at me, he heads to the bar, pours water, and drinks half before speaking again.
“You’ve tested the front route, the service corridor, and the private lift. You’ve watched my staff, timed my men, and figured out where two cameras don’t overlap cleanly. Was there an actual plan somewhere in all that, or were you relying on pure nerve?”
I lean back into the sofa and cross my arms. “You noticed.”
He angles his head and gives me a look of long-suffering patience. I’d be insulted, but I’m still too angry. “I notice everything in my own house.”
The answer makes me want to throw the nearest glass object. I rally. “You dragged me here and sealed the exits. Am I supposed to sit quietly and develop a hobby?”
He comes back toward me, slower this time, and stops just close enough that I can see the small flecks of light in his irises.
“You’re supposed to understand that every failed attempt teaches my enemies how far you’ll go and how desperate you are to get out.
If you force my hand harder than I want, I will make this place more difficult. Neither of us wants that.”
The silence between us lasts a second too long, and then I decide not to waste more time. “Fine. Then let’s stop pretending this is a conversation about freedom.”
His head tilts. “Go on.”
“I want a phone.”
He frowns thoughtfully for a moment. “No unrestricted calls.”
“I didn’t say unrestricted. I said a phone.”
He folds his arms. “What else?”
“I want to choose my food. I’m not lying here eating whatever careful nonsense your kitchen keeps sending like I’m a patient too delicate to know what she wants.
I also want work materials, news, and enough information that I’m not hearing men discuss my future in the next room and learning about it from silence. ”
His mouth shifts at the food part. “You negotiate well when you stop performing outrage,” he remarks.
“I perform nothing,” I retort. “Do we have a deal?”
He chuckles deeply once again and his eyes drop to my mouth like he remembers exactly how it looks when I say something filthy instead of clever.
“You get a monitored phone,” he says. “All calls are cleared by me or Kolya. Food goes through the house, and anything delivered gets screened. You get access to work materials and trade news in the library, and if men are discussing something that affects you directly, you hear enough to understand it.”
I think about it for a bit. “That’s vague.”
He shrugs. “That’s the offer.”
I hold his gaze a beat, then nod once. “Fine.”
He studies me as if agreement from me is more suspicious than defiance. “You’re going to make this difficult later, aren’t you?”
I arrange my lips into a sweet little smile. “Of course.”
His eyes drop over me, taking in my crossed arms, bare feet, and the expensive shirt of his I stole from the laundry because it was softer than anything in my room. “Good,” he answers. “I’d worry if you got easy.”
A flush climbs my throat, so I fold my arms tighter and lift my chin. “That sounded smug even for you.”
He leans down as if he’s about to say something cruel, then just brushes his thumb once over the inside of my forearm where I’ve folded my arms too tightly. “Try not to look so good while you’re threatening me,” he murmurs, and then he’s gone.
That afternoon, he brings the doctor again, and this time, I cooperate enough to keep the room from turning into another fight.
She’s in her forties, elegant without trying too hard, and completely unfazed by Anton, though I can’t say the same for myself.
He’s off in the corner, six-foot-something of dark suit, broad shoulders, watchful eyes and that wicked mouth of his, and I’m irritated by how quickly my body notices before my brain can get there.
The doctor checks my blood pressure, asks about nausea, appetite, sleep, movement, and stress, and writes things down in neat, quick strokes. “How much activity?” she asks.
“Less than I’d like.”
Anton agrees, “Not enough.”
I look at him. “I was still speaking.”
The doctor doesn’t react. “You need regular food, hydration, controlled movement, and less strain. Seven weeks is early, but that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant.”
I nod once.
Then she says, “Given the circumstances, consistency matters.”
That phrase stays with me after she leaves.
Given the circumstances. Doctors say things like this when the situation needs more than medicine.
Nothing about this is private now—not in Anton’s world.
Timing, diet, stress, movement, risk all get folded into security and structure the second men like him hear the word blood.
The rest of the day goes per usual. Later on, Anton hands me a monitored phone when I’m reading in the library and gruffly says, “You can call someone, but one call, and short.”
I look at him over the edge of the desk. “Your hovering helps no one.”
“It helps me.”
He waves the thing exasperatedly at me and after a pause, I snatch it from him and dial Zhenya. She answers on the third ring. “Yes?”
“It’s me.”
A pause. Then, “You sound fed. That’s new.”
I almost laugh. “Don’t get sentimental on me.”
“I’d rather get useful. Talk.”
Anton is leaning against the bookshelf to my right with his arms crossed, watching my face instead of pretending not to listen. I angle away from him anyway.
“How’s the weather on the Baltic side?” I ask.
Zhenya answers immediately. “Bad enough that old boats are getting called back, and the ones still out are choosing their harbors carefully.”
My fingers tighten around the phone. “Maks?”
“Yes.”
I close my eyes for one second.
“He’s pulling certain men closer,” she goes on, “and he’s pushing others far enough out that they can’t see the books anymore. Family subsidiaries are getting squeezed quietly. Nobody wants to call it a purge yet, but they’re already choosing sides.”
“And me?”
Now her voice flattens. “He’s speaking ahead of the problem.”
I frown. “What does that mean?”
There’s a sigh before she speaks again. “It means he’s telling people you’re unstable, compromised, and being worked on by outside interests. If anything comes out in your name later, he wants to be prepared before it lands.”
The way her voice drops to a whisper makes me shiver. “So he’s not only searching.”
“No,” Zhenya says. “Now he’s building the story in case he doesn’t get you back first.”
I lean back in the chair and stare at the dark window. “Thank you.”
When the call ends, I set the phone down and keep looking at the window for a moment. Anton quirks his head at me. “Want to talk about it?”
I shake my head at first, then think the better of it and give him what I just heard in bits and pieces. He listens carefully, then folds his hands in front of his chest. “He’s scared.”
Maybe, but I’m still worried. “He’s getting the narrative in place before the facts arrive.”
“And that means what you found matters more than he wants anyone to know.”
“Yes.”
He pushes off the shelf and comes around the desk, close enough now that I can smell soap, tobacco, and the trace of whatever he was drinking earlier. “What else?”
I hesitate before saying, “There’s someone I need to find.”
His face changes slightly. “Who?”
“A retired bookkeeper. László Varga. My father trusted him with old reconciliations, the kind men forget about until those reconciliations can ruin them. If he still has records, he might be able to connect the corridor, the money, and the old killing in one place.”
Anton watches me with that stillness that means he’s taking it in.
“I tried to reach him before Budapest got burned,” I say. “Twice I got close through old names and side questions. If I can find him before Maks does, I might be able to do more than survive this.”
Anton nods once. “I’ll find out who he still answers to, where he is, and what’s left of his records.”
I blink. “That quickly?”
“Yes.”
“You’d help me with that?”
He holds my gaze. “If he gives you what you need to ruin Maks properly, then he helps me too.”
That steadies something in me that’s been restless for days, and I’m surprised by how reassured I feel. “Thank you,” I say before I can reconsider the words.
He looks at me like he didn’t expect that and enjoys it when it comes anyway. A moment, and the surprise that’s mirrored in his eyes cools again. “Don’t make a habit of gratitude. It’ll damage your reputation.”
We stand for a bit, and then thankfully, the house kitchen sends up another careful dinner, and I look at the tray, then at him, and decide I’m done being managed for the day. “I want pizza,” I say.
His brows knit together immediately. “The kitchen can—”
“Fuck your kitchen,” I reply. “I want delivery. Greasy, with extra cheese and sauce.”
His eyes narrow a little, then he takes out his phone. “Fine.”
When it arrives through three layers of screening and one deeply unimpressed kitchen manager, it’s enough to make me grin.
It’s a large pepperoni with red peppers and extra cheese and grease blotting the box.
Anton opens it himself at the kitchen island while I steal the first slice and burn my fingers on it.
We eat in silence for a while—he joins in after I convince him by dangling a slice in front of his nose. Four slices in, I glance at him over the box. “What does Maks look like from the outside? To a stranger?”
Anton tears another slice in half and leans a hip against a table. “He’s the kind of asshole who mistakes escalation for strength and calls everyone else weak when they prefer fewer graves.”
He pauses to take another bite, and it does unfair things to the line of his mouth and throat that I do not need right now. “Men like him are common. Clean jacket, tidy smile, appetite big enough to damage other people’s lives, and just enough intelligence to think they’re exceptional for it.”
He’s read Maks exactly right. Anton sees more than he says, and that’s been obvious to me from the beginning. The more time I spend with him, the harder it gets not to notice how much is going on under the surface.
When he calls the kitchen and asks for Coke, I know he’s buying himself a minute.
The bottles arrive cold. He twists one open, takes a long drink, then walks to the window with it in his hand.
I stay at the island and watch him between sips, already knowing I’m not going to like whatever comes next. “I’m meeting the Brotherhood soon.”
I straighten slowly. “Who exactly are we talking about when you say Brotherhood?”
He turns back to me. “The top layer—men who sit above the routes, the money, the crews, and the favors. They’re the ones who decide what matters, what gets buried, and who gets protected when things turn ugly. They care about blood, leverage, and whether a problem costs more alive than dead.”
The Coke suddenly tastes flat in my mouth.
“They’ll want to know,” he goes on, “why a Reznikov is sheltering a Leonidov woman in his own home, feeding her, guarding her, and moving men around her. I can redirect some things, and I can keep details tight, but I can’t walk into that room and pretend your presence here is casual.
They’ll smell the lie before I finish the sentence. ”
I fold my arms. “So, what are you going to tell them?”
His gaze holds mine for a beat too long. “That part of the answer is simple.”
He sets the bottle down and comes back toward the island. “I need to tell the top layer that you’re carrying my child.”