19. Sofiya
SOFIYA
“Start talking, Sofiya.”
I stare at him for one beat too long, then cross to the desk and shove the freight papers aside until I’ve got enough room to think.
My pulse is still too fast from the kiss, from the meeting he just walked out of, from the look on his face when he said Varga was gone.
There is no clean lane between any of it now.
Everything is piled together. Maks. Varga.
Anton. The baby. The Brotherhood. Routes. Lies. Blood.
I brace both hands on the desk and force myself to choose one thread.
“If Varga’s moved, then Maks either found him or got close enough to make him run,” I say. “That means the old man mattered more than we hoped, or Maks wouldn’t have wasted time on him yet.”
Anton stands on the other side of the desk, jacket open, tie gone, shirt collar loose, dark hair slightly off from my hands and his own temper. He looks tired in the expensive male way that only makes him worse for me. “Useful. Keep going.”
I cut him a look. “Don’t sound so pleased with yourself.”
“I just dragged a plan out of a Brotherhood meeting and got kissed for my trouble. I’m taking what I can get.”
I ignore that and grab a pen. “Varga isn’t the only way in. He was the cleanest way. That’s different.”
His mouth shifts. “Now that sounds like you.”
I drag a notepad toward me and start writing.
“Maks built the corridor on top of existing Leonidov structure. That means he didn’t create everything from scratch.
He reused people, codes, shells, storage habits, and payments.
Men like him always think that makes them clever.
Mostly, it makes them traceable if you know where to look. ”
Anton comes around the desk and leans one hip against it beside me. “Show me.”
I write three names first. “These are the outer companies my father distrusted on principle. They were much too tidy and quiet, and they always existed at one remove from the real movement. Two are probably dead paper now. One may still be live.”
He reads over my shoulder. “May?”
“Yes. That’s how life works when people are trying to kill you and bury the paperwork.”
His hand settles on the back of my chair, warm and distracting. I keep writing anyway.
“This one,” I say, tapping the second name, “handled refrigerated overflow through older Baltic channels. It used to be useful for goods like fish, dairy, preserved meat—anything that could hide inside volume and timing.”
I pause for a breath, feeling his hand trace a circle just under the back of my neck, and keep going. “If Maks revived it, then he didn’t do it because it was glamorous. He did it because old freight lines don’t get questioned if they still look boring.”
Anton nods once. “That matches what Varga gave me.”
I angle my head to look back at him. “How much did he actually give you?”
“Enough to confirm the structure, but not enough to hand me the whole thing tied with a ribbon.” He glances down at the page. “He was cautious.”
Yeah, that makes sense considering he’d have wanted to steer clear of landing in too much danger.
I exhale and write again. “If Varga’s gone now, then I’d bet Maks got wind that somebody was reaching. Which means we stop reaching like we’re looking for an old man and start reaching like we’re looking for movement.”
Anton watches my pen. “Meaning?”
“Meaning men. The kind who hate being cut out.”
That gets his attention properly.
I circle the first company name. “He’s pulling some people closer and freezing others out. Zhenya said that. If Maks is tightening, then somebody on the outside edge is already angry. Angry men talk, especially when they think somebody else is getting rich in a way they didn’t approve.”
Anton smiles slightly. “Now you sound like you belong in my meetings.”
I roll my eyes. “I belonged in them before your people discovered furniture and imported vodka.”
His laugh is brief and too pleased. “Good answer.”
I hate that my body responds to that voice every single time. “He needs three things to keep this alive,” I say. “Routes, silence, and a version of the story that protects him if silence breaks. We can’t hit all three at once with what we have. So we pick the one that makes the other two wobble.”
“Routes,” he says.
I look up at him. “Yes.”
He nods. “Good. Keep going.”
I tap the paper again. “If we prove he’s moving goods through revived family structures, then the money gets harder to explain and the story gets harder to stage.
He can lie about me, call me unstable, say I’m compromised.
But if a real shipment gets opened in the wrong place with the wrong paperwork attached to it, then his narrative starts losing value. ”
Anton folds his arms. “You’ve got a specific shipment in mind.”
“Not a shipment. A type.”
He waits.
“Cold-chain. Something routine enough to move quietly and valuable enough that he won’t abandon it easily.
He used the Finnish side for that already.
If he’s still using refrigerated overflow and old vendor lines, then there will be another load soon.
There has to be. Structures like this don’t exist to admire themselves. ”
His eyes stay on my face. “That’s what I told them.”
“Then you were right.”
“Careful.”
“Don’t fish.”
He laughs again, lower this time, and the sound goes through me in a way I resent. Then he reaches past me, takes the pen from my fingers, and writes a date on the pad.
“This,” he says, tapping the number, “is when Helsinki flagged that declaration last week.”
I go still. “Why didn’t you say that sooner?”
“You were busy kissing me.”
I scowl at him. “That is a terrible defense.”
“Still accurate.”
I lean over the pad anyway. The date lines up too well with the timing from Zhenya and the earlier references in the copied files. My thoughts start moving faster.
“That means the next movement window is close,” I say. “Not weeks. Days.”
Anton nods. “That’s my reading too.”
I take the pen back and draw a line through the names. “Then this is what we do. We find the current relay on the old cold-chain line, identify the outer company still being used to clean it, and pressure the man just outside Maks’s circle who’s angry enough to want protection more than loyalty.”
He watches me for a second. “That’s not bad.”
“It’s better than not bad.”
He laughs softly. “It is.”
I turn toward him fully. “And we need proof that can survive his story.”
Anton’s face settles into that look he gets when he’s already deciding who is about to have a terrible week. “I can get men on the relay. Quietly.”
“I know.”
“I can get eyes on the next cold-chain movement.”
“I know that too.”
His hand lifts and catches a loose strand of my hair, then tucks it back behind my ear in a gesture so casual and intimate, I almost lose the thread completely.
“You keep saying that,” he murmurs.
I force myself to stay with the point. “Because you’re good at this.”
His eyes drop to my mouth. “You say nice things very carefully.”
“I’m trying not to encourage you.”
“That ship sank in Prague.”
I close my eyes for half a second. Dangerous man. Vile timing. Good hands. Worse mouth. No respect for the way my body turns toward him before the rest of me agrees.
When I open my eyes again, he’s still watching me, and the heat between us is suddenly right there again, alive and impossible to ignore. I put the pen down before I do something reckless with it.
“We also need one more thing,” I say.
“What?”
“A way to force Maks to move too fast.”
His expression shifts back to business. “Go on.”
“He’s setting the story already. That means he thinks he has enough control to shape things before facts land.
If somebody starts leaning on the wrong side of his structure, not hard enough to blow it open, just hard enough to make him nervous, he’ll start tightening faster. Men make mistakes when they speed up.”
Anton’s mouth curves. “You say that like you’ve watched it happen before.”
“I grew up in freight. I’ve watched men ruin themselves over smaller things than pride and hidden money.”
He takes the pad and looks at the page in silence for a second. “So. Next steps.”
I nod. “You hit the relay. I go through every name I still remember from my father’s side and separate the men who could be turned from the men who’d die before speaking. We build the map from both ends.”
“You’re not leaving the penthouse.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s what I’m saying.”
I glare at him. “You really can’t help yourself.”
“Not with you, no.”
I should shove him. Instead, I say, “Then I want full access to the library files, the news feeds, the freight summaries, and anything your men are saying about Baltic movement.”
He looks at me like he expected that and is already halfway to yes. “You’ll get them.”
“And I want updates when the relay moves.”
“You’ll get enough.”
“That means you’re still filtering.”
“That means I’m still in charge.”
I stare at him, and he stares back. After a minute, I sigh and relent. “Fine.”
His hand settles at my waist again, just there like it belongs. “We’ve got a plan,” he says.
“We’ve got the start of one.”
His thumb shifts once against my side. That tiny movement does too much to me and he feels it immediately. Anton notices everything when it matters and far too much when it comes to me.
He looks at my mouth.
I look at his.
And there it is again, that hard pull between us that turns every sensible conversation into something that feels one bad decision away from a bed.
“You’re doing it,” he says quietly.
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me like you’re deciding whether to insult me or take my shirt off.”
I roll my eyes, but the heat in my face gives me away. “Maybe both.”
His smile is indecent. “That’s my favorite version of you.”
I put a hand flat against his chest, meaning to push him back enough to breathe, and end up just feeling him there. Hard muscle under the shirt, warm skin under that, heart steady in a way that annoys me more now than when I first met him.
“You came home from a meeting where men discussed my existence like logistics,” I say. “Why are you still impossible?”
“Why are you still this beautiful when you’re angry?”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No. It’s me getting distracted.”
Maks is moving, Varga is gone, the relay matters, and Anton has a narrow window to keep his place in a Brotherhood that already doubts his judgment on me. This is not the time to let him put his hands on me and erase my good sense.
My hand slides up into his shirt anyway.
His breath changes. “That’s not helping,” he says.
“You started it.”
He holds back long enough to say, “I absolutely did.” Then he kisses me, mouth on mine, one hand at the back of my neck, the other at my waist pulling me out of the chair and into him in one smooth move that leaves no room for second thoughts.
I make a small sound against his mouth that I’d be embarrassed by if he weren’t swallowing it whole.
This man.
I’ve been angry at him for days. I’ve wanted him for longer. I kiss him back harder.
His hand slides down my spine, broad and firm and claiming more than he has any right to.
Mine drag up into his hair and hold. He likes that.
I can tell by the way his mouth shifts, by the rough sound he makes into the kiss, by the way his body crowds mine until the edge of the desk presses into my hip.
“Sofiya,” he says against my mouth.
“What?”
“That shirt is a problem.”
I glance down. It’s one of his again. Soft, big, worn open at the throat. His eyes follow the movement and then come back to my face with the kind of look that makes my whole body pull tight.
“You are not making this easier,” I say.
“That wasn’t the goal.”
His mouth leaves mine just long enough to drag along my jaw and down my throat. My fingers tighten in his hair. “We should stop,” I say, and it comes out breathless enough to prove I don’t mean it.
“No.”
“We have work.”
“So did we in Prague.”
I laugh into his shoulder, and he takes advantage of the angle to kiss my neck again, open-mouthed now, and I swear under my breath when my knees nearly go. “That’s unfair.”
He lifts his head. “Life is hard.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“And you’re wet.”
My whole face burns. “Anton.”
His grin is pure male trouble. I shove at his chest and he catches both my wrists in one hand and kisses me again like he enjoys every second of me fighting him even when he already knows where it ends.
“Tell me to stop, then,” he says.
I look at him. Really look at him.
Big, dark, far too handsome, shirt collar open, eyes full of that dangerous amusement he gets when he knows exactly what he’s doing to me and enjoys the answer.
He came home carrying Brotherhood pressure and a deadline wrapped around his throat, and he still walked into the library, told me the truth, listened when it mattered, and took me seriously when I gave him something useful.
What undoes me the most isn’t his mouth or even his hands, but his respect. So I do the only thing I can and pull one hand free and hook my fingers in his shirt instead. “Don’t be gentle.”
His eyes go dark at once. “That I can do.”
He kisses me again, and this time, when he lifts me onto the edge of the desk, neither of us pretends this is going to stop at kissing.