25. Sofiya
SOFIYA
After a minute, I continue speaking.
“The drive was never the whole thing,” I say. “You knew that, or you wouldn’t have chased me this hard. You knew I copied something, but what scared you was the chance that he had already built the full reconciliation before he died.”
His voice comes back softer. “What reconciliation?”
“The one that connects the old route structure, the intermediary payment trail, the reopened codes, the vendor approvals, and the side accounts you used to build your private corridor.”
Nothing.
I keep going.
“You searched the obvious files after he died. You searched the servers, the apartment, maybe even my old things. You went after Varga because you thought he might hold the missing paper, and now you’re moving his boxes at midnight because he did.”
“You’re guessing.”
“I’m reading you.” My fingers close around the edge of the desk. “You can live with Anton having a few records. You can talk around those if you have enough time and enough frightened men. What you can’t live with is my father’s final index showing intent. Not movement. Not error. Intent.”
Maks breathes once through his nose.
“You always were good with words,” he says, but his voice has lost its ease.
“No. I’m good with structures. Words are what men use when the structure is already bad.”
Niko stands near the door, listening with a face that has gone very still. I can feel him wanting to interrupt, but he doesn’t. Smart man.
Maks speaks again, and now there is no warmth left. “Where is it?”
I let my gaze land on the number I wrote in the margin, then on the old company list beside it. “The Yantar clock.”
For a few seconds, I hear nothing at all.
Then Maks laughs once, and it sounds deliciously thin.
“You expect me to believe your father hid a full reconciliation package inside an old clock?”
“I expect you to remember how much he hated that clock,” I say. “He hated it because everyone trusted it. Men sat under it and lied while it kept ticking over their heads. He told me once the room trusted the clock more than the men in it.”
“That means nothing.”
“It meant nothing to me too.” I make my voice lower, and I hate how easy the lie gets once it has my father wrapped around it. “Until I opened the casing.”
His breath changes.
There’s the hook under his ribs.
“What did you find?” he asks.
“An index. Copies. A second storage trail. Enough to show that the intermediary case was never dead, and enough to prove you built the new corridor with old family structure because you wanted the old blood available when you needed cover.”
He swears under his breath. One word, almost lost.
I close my eyes for one second because relief hits so hard, it nearly ruins me. He believes enough. Not all of it. Not fully. But enough to make him afraid, and fear is the only leash men like him respect.
“You’re lying,” he says.
“Then let Anton die and see where the package lands.”
The words cost me, but I make them clean.
Maks takes too long to answer. Somewhere behind me, Niko mutters something into his mic and turns away, probably getting confirmation from the yard. I keep my eyes on the desk because if I look at him now, he’ll see too much.
“What do you want?” Maks asks.
“Anton, Kolya, and their men walk out alive. They take the boxes they already opened. They keep the man in the coat.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t get everything.”
“I get what I can ruin you with.”
His voice hardens. “You’re carrying Reznikov blood and still think you can threaten me with family secrets.”
My hand tightens over my stomach, but I’m honestly unsurprised he knows. Someone in the brotherhood has been feeding secrets to the Leonidovs—that’s why Anton was compromised in the first place. Maks likely knew what we were planning all along.
“That baby is exactly why I can threaten you. You made sure I had nothing left to lose except people I’m willing to fight for.”
That shuts him up again.
When Maks answers, his words come slower. “You come to the yard.”
“No.”
“You come to the east service gate near the repair shed, alone, and you bring me what your father left. If the package is real, Anton walks. If it isn’t, I’ll put him down in front of you and make sure Reznikov hears why.”
My mouth goes dry, but my voice doesn’t shake. “Anton walks first.”
“You’re not in charge.”
“I hear his voice first, or I send the index out.”
“You don’t have the reach.”
“Try me.”
He breathes out, and I can almost see his smile returning in pieces. “You sound very sure of yourself for a woman who has spent the last month running.”
“I was pregnant, hunted, and still smarter than your men. Be more embarrassed.”
Pavel glances at me, and if this room weren’t built around disaster, I might enjoy the look on his face. Maks doesn’t enjoy it. I hear that in the silence that follows.
“Five minutes,” he says at last. “Reznikov calls you. Then you come.”
“Three.”
“You’re pushing.”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“Three,” he says and hangs up.
For one second after the line dies, I keep the phone pressed to my ear. My whole body wants to shake now, but I don’t let it. Shaking is for later, when Anton is breathing in front of me and furious enough to tear the city apart.
Niko steps closer. “You’re not going to that yard.”
I turn my head and look at him. “I am.”
“Mr. Reznikov will kill me before Maks does.”
“Then tell him he’ll have to answer to me.”
His mouth opens, then shuts. He’s loyal, not stupid, and there’s a difference. Anton hires men who eventually understand a room.
My phone vibrates before he can argue again.
Unknown number.
I answer, and for one awful second I hear only breathing. Then Anton says, “Sofiya.”
I grip the back of the chair so hard, the wood presses into my palm. His voice is rough, strained, and too carefully held together.
“Where are you hit?”
“You first.”
“Anton.”
“Where are you?”
“In the library.”
“Stay there.”
I almost laugh, and it comes out broken enough that I hate both of us. “You’re bleeding behind an archive building, and you’re still giving orders.”
“Answer me properly.”
“I did.”
“No, you gave me the version that helps you lie.”
He’s hurt, furious, still reading me through a phone line. My throat tightens so fast, I have to swallow before I can speak.
“Can you walk?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Can Kolya?”
“He’s fine.”
“Good.”
“What did you tell Maks?”
I close my eyes, then open them and look at the scarf draped over the back of the chair. The real drive is still in the hem. The lie is somewhere else now, already growing teeth.
“I told him my father left a final reconciliation package.”
Anton goes quiet.
Then, in a voice that makes Niko take a step back, he says, “What package?”
“One Maks believes in.”
“Sofiya.”
“I had to move him.”
“You lied.”
He understands fast. I hear it in the way his breathing changes, in the sudden lack of words. He sees the move, the risk, the trap, and probably the part where I plan to put myself inside the space I just opened.
“No,” he says.
“Yes.”
“You’re not coming here.”
“Anton.”
“No.” His voice turns rougher, and I hear movement behind him, then Kolya saying something I can’t catch. “You listen to me. You don’t leave that penthouse and go near Maks. You don’t trade yourself and our child for me.”
My heart skips a beat. Anton’s fear doesn’t sound like anyone else’s. It sounds like command because command is the shape he gives to things he can’t bear.
“I’m not trading myself,” I say. “I’m buying time.”
“With your body in his reach.”
“With the only bait he’ll chase.”
He swears, and pain cuts the word short.
My voice softens before I can stop it. “How bad is it?”
“Not bad enough.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Then don’t go.”
For a second, neither of us speaks. The whole room seems to hold around the call, Pavel near the door, the papers on the desk, the city beyond the windows, my hand over the small life inside me. Anton is bleeding because I was right, and now I have to be right again.
“I love you,” I say.
His breath stops.
“Sofiya.”
“I need you alive enough to be furious with me.”
“Don’t you dare hang up.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
“Sofiya.”
I end the call before his voice breaks something useful inside me.
Niko stares at the phone in my hand. “That was either very brave or very stupid.”
“It can be both.” I grab the scarf from the chair and wrap it around my neck, making sure the stitched hem lies flat. “Get me a car.”
“He told you not to go.”
“We’re all making interesting choices tonight.”
Niko drags a hand over his mouth, then turns and speaks into his mic.
I move past him before he finishes, heading for the side cabinet where Anton keeps things he assumes I don’t know about.
He really should’ve known better after locking me in here with nothing to do except read, pace, and learn his house.
I don’t want to waste any more time climbing upstairs to get my own gun.
The drawer opens on the third try.
Inside are two handguns, spare magazines, cash, and a passport that is definitely not under Anton’s real name. I take one gun, check it the way my father taught me, then tuck it into the back of my waistband under Anton’s shirt and my coat.
Niko notices. “You know how to use that?”
I look at him. “My father was paranoid, not negligent.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I know where to point it, and I know not to wave it around like a nervous idiot. Tonight, that’ll have to do.”
He mutters something in Russian that I choose not to translate. Then he reaches into the cabinet, takes another magazine, and holds it out.
I take it.
His face stays grim. “You don’t go alone.”
“Maks said alone.”
“Maks isn’t in this house.”
I almost smile. “Anton must like you.”
“Anton is going to shoot me.”
“Probably not if you save me first.”
We leave through the service side instead of the private elevator. The hallways of Anton’s penthouse feel different now, not like a cage, not like safety either. They feel like a machine I’m moving through for the first time with my own hand on the switch.