22. Sofiya
SOFIYA
“We still have work to do.”
The words come out rough against Anton’s throat, and for one second I think he’s going to laugh them off, roll me under him again, and ruin the rest of the night properly.
Instead, he looks down at me with that wrecked, satisfied face of his, one arm still around my back under the throw, and says, “I know.”
All that does is make me love him more.
I stay where I am for another breath, warm and used and curled against his chest while the city glows through the windows and the papers we abandoned ten feet away keep waiting like they haven’t watched us make a complete disaster of the couch.
My skin is still hot, my body still heavy in that blissed-out way that makes movement feel optional.
Then Maks pushes his way back into my head, and the softness breaks.
Anton feels the shift at once. “You’re thinking again,” he says.
“Yes.”
“You looked nicer when you weren’t.”
I tip my head back enough to see him. “That’s a terrible thing to say to a woman after sex.”
“It’s accurate.”
I glare at him. He kisses my forehead and pours me more water from the side table before I can decide whether to be offended or touched. I drink because he’s right, which is getting exhausting.
When I pass the glass back, he sets it down and drags the throw higher over my shoulders. “Talk.”
I tuck the blanket closed over my chest and shift so I’m facing him more fully. “If Varga’s gone, then Maks felt pressure somewhere he didn’t like.”
“Yes.”
“And if he felt it, he moved.”
Anton’s hand slides down my spine once, then stops at my waist. “Yes.”
I study his face. Hair wrecked. Mouth still red from kissing me. Shirt open. One of my bite marks just visible above the collar. He looks like an expensive problem and a bad habit, and I’m apparently in love with him now, which feels both inevitable and deeply annoying.
He sees the way I’m looking and his mouth shifts. “Keep that up and we lose another hour.”
“I’m trying to be serious.”
“No, you’re trying to undress me again.”
I push his shoulder. “You are impossible.”
“And you love me.”
That makes me laugh in spite of myself. “You got very arrogant very fast.”
“I was already arrogant. You just made it official.”
I curse inwardly and move and my legs protest when I stand, and the look he gives me is filthy enough that I stop halfway through pulling the throw around myself. “Don’t,” I say.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was appreciating the aftermath.”
“That isn’t better.”
He stays sprawled on the couch for one more second, enjoying himself, then gets up and reaches for the shirt I lost somewhere in the process. He shakes it out, hands it to me, and turns away while I put it back on. The small courtesy makes butterflies erupt in my stomach.
He’s just letting me gather myself without making a spectacle of it.
When I finish buttoning what matters, I look at the desk and say, “We need Kolya.”
Anton nods once, already reaching for his phone. “He’s close.”
“And bring everything.”
“Everything is a large category.”
I walk to the desk, gather the route notes into piles, and look back at him. “Then let’s start with everything on Helsinki, bonded cold storage, and the flagged declaration from last week.”
He sends the message without another word.
The library looks worse than it did before.
Freight summaries shoved aside, a pizza that we ordered at some point peeking out from its box on the sideboard, notes half under the desk, one pen on the floor.
I crouch to retrieve it and feel Anton’s gaze between my shoulder blades.
That man can make bending over to pick up a pen feel indecent.
“You can help instead of staring,” I mutter.
“I’m helping.”
“You’re absolutely not.”
His laugh follows me as I straighten. Then he does help. He gathers the papers by subject without being asked, hands me the ones from Helsinki first, and drags a second chair over so he’s beside me instead of across from me.
We’re halfway through sorting the pages when Kolya walks in, takes one look at the room, and says, “I see everyone is handling pressure well.”
Anton doesn’t bother looking up. “Sit down.”
Kolya does. He carries a thin folder, a tablet, and the expression of a man who already knows something has broken and wants to know whether it’s the problem or the people.
His eyes flick over me once. Hair a mess. Anton’s shirt. Bare legs under the throw I dragged from the couch. Then they move to the papers and stay there. Professional. Smart.
“What have we got?” Anton says.
Kolya opens the folder. “Helsinki customs kicked up the same flagged declaration again tonight. Correction request came through forty minutes ago. Not a full release, a bonded cold hold with a reclassification attached to an outer company.”
My head comes up. “Which one?”
He turns the page toward us.
I don’t even need the full line. I know the company name the second I see it. “That one,” I say, tapping the page. “That’s the second company from my list.”
Anton looks at me, then back at the file. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Kolya studies me for half a second. “How?”
“It handled refrigerated overflow years ago. Small, boring cargo, low-margin paper, the kind nobody remembers until it starts making the wrong people rich.”
Kolya nods once and keeps going. “The correction request moved through a brokerage relay in St. Petersburg, then bounced to a bonded cold yard outside Moscow.”
“Which yard?” I ask.
He gives me the name.
I shake my head immediately. “No.”
Both men look at me.
“That yard doesn’t make sense for true perishables on that timeline,” I say.
I reach for the paper, pull it closer, and scan the entries again.
“If this were actually fish or dairy coming off a Finnish line, they wouldn’t sit on it there under that insurance class.
Not at that hour. Not on a corrected hold with reassignment to follow. ”
Anton leans in. “Explain.”
I point at the notation. “Look here. The hold release and onward transfer are too far apart, and the insurance category is wrong for cargo that actually dies on schedule. If this were real cold-chain product, the paperwork would protect spoilage more aggressively. This doesn’t.
That means the refrigeration matters for concealment, not product life. ”
Kolya’s face changes. “So, what is it?” he asks.
“Something sealed and expensive enough to justify the structure, but not actually dependent on the declared temperature. High-value cargo disguised as something, maybe pharmaceuticals. Maybe restricted components. Maybe cash equivalents packed for movement. The point is the paperwork lies before the truck even rolls.”
Anton watches me for one long second, then says to Kolya, “What else?”
Kolya scrolls the tablet. “The brokerage relay used a secondary authorization. No full name on the first pass, just initials.”
My stomach tightens. “Show me.”
He turns the screen.
I read the line twice, then point. “That.”
Kolya looks at the marker. “You know it?”
“Yes. That’s the same internal formatting style Maks used on the copied files. Not the exact code, the shape of it. Secondary sign-off, buried under the cleaner line so anyone lazy reads the top and stops there.”
Anton leans his forearms on the desk. “Can you trace the layer below it?”
“I can tell you what to ask for,” I say. “You need the release staging, not just the shipment. If Maks built this the way I think he did, the cargo changes hands after the hold. The border paperwork only gets it through the first gate. The real switch happens at reassignment.”
Kolya nods once. “We have a partial on the yard schedule.”
“Then get the transfer lane,” I say. “Not the truck going in. The truck coming out under the new papers.”
Anton’s mouth curves very slightly. “You say that like you’ve been doing this for years.”
I look at him. “I was trained by the man Maks probably had buried.”
That shuts him up.
Kolya glances between us, decides the answer is enough, and goes back to the tablet. “The yard has two active release lanes after midnight. One goes to retail distribution. One goes to private storage and reassignment.”
I tap the screen. “Then the second lane is ours.”
“You know that from one page?”
“I know that from the timing, the insurance class, the cold hold type, and the fact that no real food shipment gets buried in dead paper and routed through a yard that slow unless somebody wants the cold on the box, not the product.”
Anton looks at Kolya. “Put eyes on the second lane.”
Kolya is already typing. “Done.”
I reach for another sheet and scan the warehouse notes he brought. “No. Don’t just put eyes on the lane. Put someone on the reassignment office too.”
Anton turns to me with his brows creased. “Why?”
“Because if the lane matters, the paperwork matters more. Drivers can be replaced. Trucks can be swapped. But the man who signs the change into the second stage is the one who knows who he answers to.”
Kolya stops typing. “That’s not bad.”
“It’s better than not bad,” I say without looking up.
Anton laughs once under his breath. “You walked into that.”
Kolya ignores him. “If we put men on both points, we’ll need a choice. Grab documents, tail product, or take the office.”
Anton looks at me. “Which?”
My pulse speeds as I realize I’m the one making a live decision.
“If you grab too early, Maks cuts the line and the man in the office gives you whatever lies he has ready,” I say. “If you tail only the product, you may get the movement but not the names above it.”
Anton waits.
I point at the yard schedule. “Take the office first only if the second lane opens late or looks wrong. If it rolls clean, follow the product and take the office on the back end before the paperwork can be burned.”
Kolya studies me with flat interest. “That’s a real answer.”
“Yes.”
Anton braces one hand on the desk and leans closer to the schedule. “What counts as wrong?”
I run my finger down the times. “If the truck changes twice before release, if the office lights up too early, if the cold hold shortens without a matching insurance correction, or if the paperwork gets rewritten in blocks instead of one update. That means panic, and panic means somebody already knows they’re being watched. ”
Kolya nods again, sharper this time. “I can work with that.”
Anton doesn’t move right away. He’s looking at the yard times, but I know he’s also looking at me. I can feel it.
When he speaks, his voice is more serious than it was on the couch. “You were right. You read it faster than my men.”
I don’t answer at first because the admission hits me harder than it should. Then I say, “Remember that next time you want to lock me in a room and call it protection.”
A flicker passes across his face and it looks like pride with nowhere decent to go. Kolya closes the folder. “I’m going to pretend that sentence wasn’t aimed at a man who can throw both of us out a window.”
Anton doesn’t even glance at him. “Move.”
Kolya stands. “I’ll take two men to the yard, one to the reassignment office, and keep one free on the brokerage line in case the paperwork doubles back.”
“Good,” Anton says. “Call me the second the second lane opens.”
Kolya pauses at the door, then looks back at me. “You were useful tonight.”
I meet his gaze. “I know.”
His mouth shifts, almost a smile, and then he leaves.
The room goes quiet after the door shuts.
Anton turns toward me slowly. “You enjoyed that?”
“I enjoyed being right.”
He chuckles. “You also enjoyed watching him realize it.”
I sit back in the chair and fold my arms. “You brought him in for that exact reason.”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t act surprised when I perform.”
His eyes drop over me once, then come back up. “You’re beautiful when you do.”
I roll my eyes, but he’s too close now for me to pretend the line didn’t land. “We have a live operation.”
“We do.”
“And you’re still looking at me like that.”
“That’s because I can do two things at once.”
I push the papers into a neater stack just to give my hands something useful to do. “You’re impossible.”
“You say that every time you’re close to kissing me.”
I look up. He’s not joking. The memory of the couch is still in my body, in the warmth between my thighs, in the soreness I can feel when I shift.
The memory of him saying I love you is somewhere under my ribs. Somewhere that doesn’t know how to protect itself against tenderness when it comes in a man built like Anton.
My voice comes out quieter than I mean it to. “Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything.”
“That’s a lie.”
“That’s optimism.”
I laugh once, helplessly annoyed, and then his phone vibrates again.
He checks the screen. This time, whatever he sees changes him immediately. The softness drops out and he looks up, concentration tight on his face. “The second lane just lit.”
My whole body goes alert. “Already?”
“Yes.”
He picks up his gun from the side drawer and checks it while I’m still getting to my feet. His jacket comes next, then the phone, then the keys.
I grab the edge of the desk. “Tell me where.”
“Khimki cold yard. Reassignment lane.”
He comes around the desk and stops right in front of me. “You stay by the phone. The second I know what’s in that lane, you’ll know.”
I catch his wrist before he can pull away. “If the load moves out without a problem, don’t waste time grabbing the first paperwork man you see.”
Anton looks back at me. “Why?”
“Because if he’s calm, he’s not important,” I say. “He’s just the one stamping forms. Follow the shipment to the next handoff. That’s where the real people behind it are more likely to be.”
He studies me for half a second, then nods once. “All right.”
I let go. He bends, kisses me once, hard enough to leave a mark and brief enough to count as cruelty, then heads for the door.
I follow him three steps anyway. “Anton.”
He turns back.
“If you come home empty-handed after I did your thinking for you, I’ll be unbearable.”
His smile comes quick and wicked. “You say that like it’s a threat.”
Then he’s gone.
The door shuts behind him, and I’m left in the library with freight papers, cold pizza, a throw still tangled on the couch, and the first real operation of this whole war moving under my skin like a second pulse.