24. Damir
DAMIR
By the third day, no one asks if I have eaten.
Marina leaves food because she knows better than to ask. Coffee beside the files. Broth near the phone. Bread on a tray by the edge of the desk. Most of it goes untouched until Mikhail stands across from me and says, “You can’t find her if you’re dead on your feet.”
I eat because he is right.
The city has been pulled apart piece by piece since Sofia disappeared.
Cameras from shops, traffic lights, hotels, parking garages, private houses, and restaurants have been collected.
Men who owe me money call before I call them, offering names, plates, rumors, anything they think may keep me away from their doors.
Dmitri’s men have been taken from clinics and apartments.
Sergei’s house is watched from every side.
Still no Sofia.
The gray car appears on three cameras and vanishes before the fourth. The plates are false. The driver keeps his face down. Whoever planned the route knew where the cameras were weak, which means this was planned.
Three days, and there’s still been no demand. I know Sergei didn’t take her. I have eyes and ears everywhere, and she hasn’t been seen in the Antonov house. If he’s hiding her or worse… I will kill that bastard.
There’s no proof of life except the footage from the basement, where she was pushed into the car alive.
That is the only thing keeping half the city from burning.
By evening, Mikhail insists we sit at the dining table. He says the house needs order. He says the men need to see me in control. He says Sofia will not be found faster because I spend another night standing over maps.
I let him arrange it.
The dining room is full, but no one relaxes. Grigori sits to my right with Maksim between him and Irina. Kirill is farther down with Lev. Nikolai stands near the wall, because he never sits unless he has to. Mikhail sits opposite me and watches everything.
I hold a glass of water and listen.
“Two Sokolov cars crossed the border yesterday,” Lev says. “Neither had her.”
“Dmitri?”
“Hidden. His father moved him after the gallery.”
“He needs doctors,” I say. “Find the doctors.”
“We’re on it.”
I look at Mikhail. “Sergei?”
“No visible movement. No direct communication with Sokolov that we can prove.”
At the table, Maksim pushes food around his plate. Irina tells him to eat. Grigori says something low to him, and the boy obeys, still half listening to the adults even though he should not understand enough to be afraid.
Sofia sat with that child once and made him laugh.
The thought comes without warning.
I see her standing between Irina and the boy, defending him even though she barely knew the rules of this house.
Kirill is speaking now, something about the Balkan supplier tied to the weapons from the warehouse attack. I force myself back into the room.
“One broker,” Kirill says. “Not directly tied to Antonov or Sokolov.”
“Name?”
“Still working.”
“Work faster.”
He nods once.
Then Irina says, quietly, “She was here such a short time. You’ve known her what, a few months? And you’ve literally stopped your life for her.”
The table goes silent.
Kirill’s eyes shift toward me, then away. Even Nikolai, standing near the wall, turns his head slightly.
Irina realizes it too late. Her face loses some color, but she doesn’t take it back.
I look at her. “A few months.”
Her fingers tighten around the napkin in her lap. “Damir, I didn’t mean—”
“What did you mean?”
Grigori leans forward. “She chose the wrong words.”
Irina lifts her chin, though I can see the effort it costs her. She’s not weak. None of the women who survive in this family are weak, but fear still shows itself in small places if a man knows where to look.
“I meant that it happened quickly,” she says. “I meant that none of us had time to understand what she became to you before everything in this house started revolving around finding her.”
“That is closer to truth,” I say.
“It was not an accusation.”
“It sounded like one.”
Her mouth tightens. “Maybe because all of us are scared and exhausted.”
Grigori says her name quietly, warning her, but she keeps looking at me.
I prefer courage to apology. But not this time, not when they don’t understand what she means to me. None of them do, and none of them will. I set my glass down before I break this one too. My hand is already cut from the last time I lost patience with something that could not fight back.
Grigori leans forward. “Damir, she’s upset. She didn’t mean it like that.”
I look at him. “Don’t speak for her.”
He stops.
Irina’s hands are tight in her lap. She’s nervous, but she keeps her eyes on me. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t look for her,” she says. “I’m saying this house is close to breaking. You are close to breaking. And nobody knows what Sofia is to you because none of this makes sense from the outside.”
Even the staff near the door have gone quiet. I look down the table at them and realize Irina has said what the others have been too careful to say.
They don’t understand why Sofia matters this much. They don’t know what it cost me to watch that footage. They don’t know what I keep seeing when I close my eyes.
“You are asking the wrong question,” I say.
Irina’s brows draw together. “What question should I ask?”
“Not what happens if we don’t find her.” I look down the table, at every face turned toward me with varying degrees of caution. “Ask what happens to the men who took her when we do.”
No one speaks.
That answer is easier for them to understand.
It’s easier for me too. Violence has rules. A man takes what belongs to me, I find him. He runs, I close the road. He hides, I burn the room around him. He begs, I decide whether the begging interests me. And this time—the punishment for taking Sofia—is only death.
“I know what it looks like when a man starts losing himself,” she says quietly. “This house has seen it before.”
Elena.
She doesn’t say the name. She doesn’t have to.
My jaw tightens.
Grigori notices. “Enough.”
Irina lowers her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
I sit there for a moment, looking at her, then at the rest of the table.
She is not wrong. That’s the problem. For three days, everything else has stopped mattering. I didn’t choose that logically. I didn’t sit down and decide she had earned this much of me. It happened before I understood it.
Maybe at the restaurant, when she looked at Dmitri like she wanted to stab him with a fork.
Maybe at the wedding, when she agreed to marry me because it was the only way to stop more blood.
Maybe when she stood in my house wearing my ring on black thread and still argued with me like I was only a man, not someone she should fear.
Maybe when she took my hand while the doctor stitched me and pretended it meant nothing.
I don’t know the exact moment. I only know that now she is gone, and the house feels wrong without her in it.
I push my chair back and stand.
Grigori rises halfway. “Damir.”
I look at him. “Stay with your family.”
He stops.
I leave the dining room. I need a minute without people watching me like I’m about to give an execution order. I go to the smaller sitting room near the terrace. It’s quiet there. The fire is low. Maksim’s wooden horse is on the floor near the chair, beside a small soldier with one arm missing.
Sofia played with him here.
Grigori told me Maksim keeps asking when she will come back because they didn’t finish their game.
I pick up the horse and turn it in my hand. It’s just a child’s toy. Scratched wood. Bad paint. One leg chipped. Still, Maksim carries it everywhere.
A few minutes later, Grigori comes in with Maksim asleep against his shoulder. The boy’s fist is twisted in Grigori’s shirt. His face is soft with sleep, his cheek pressed to his father’s collarbone.
Grigori stops by the door. “Irina is sorry.”
“I heard her.”
“She’s scared.”
“So is everyone.”
He comes farther into the room. “She should not have said it like that.”
“No.”
“But she is not the only one thinking it.”
I look at him.
He holds my gaze. “You have stopped everything for Sofia. I’m not saying you are wrong. I’m saying you should admit what that means before you find her.”
“And what does it mean?”
“It means she is not just a responsibility.”
I say nothing.
Maksim shifts in his arms and mumbles something. Grigori rubs his back until he settles again.
“He thinks she promised to finish their game.”
“She did?”
“I don’t know. He says she did.”
I look at the child. “Then she will.”
Grigori studies me for a moment. “You really believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He exhales. “Because I may have something.”
Every part of me goes still. “What?”
“There is a man in the city. Arman Chekonov.”
I know the name. He owns a club, but that is not why people use him.
Arman moves things. Cars. Documents. packages.
People, when the job requires it. He handles deliveries for men who don’t want their own names attached to the work.
He’s not loyal to one family, which is why several families still use him.
Men like that hear things, even when they are not involved.
“What makes you think he knows anything?” I ask.
“I don’t know that he does,” Grigori says. “But someone moved Sofia out of the building efficiently without us being any wiser, there’s a good chance someone had to arrange the route, the vehicle, the plates, or the handoff. Arman deals with those kinds of arrangements.”
“That doesn’t mean he touched this.”
“No,” Grigori says. “But it means he may have heard who did.”
I say nothing. For three days, we have chased cameras, plates, doctors, Dmitri’s men, Sergei’s movements, and every obvious trail. None of it has brought Sofia back. If the men who took her used outside help, someone like Arman may have some knowledge about it.
“And you think Arman will talk?”
Grigori gives me a dry look. “Not because you ask nicely.”
“No one talks because I ask nicely.”
“That is exactly why I’m saying be careful. If you go in like you already know he’s guilty, he will protect himself. If you go in like you need information, he may give you something useful.”
I look at him. He holds my gaze, even with his sleeping son in his arms.
“What else do you know?” I ask.
“His club is open tonight. He usually works from there after midnight. If he’s willing to talk, that is where you’ll find him.”
I take out my phone. I call Mikhail.
He answers immediately. “What is it?”
“We have a lead.”
“Who?”
“We’re going to a club.”