Chapter 12 Sofiya
Sofiya
SONG: CALLING BY MOTHER SELENE
A man I finally got to tell me more about Father’s operation smells like stale cigarettes and desperation.
We meet in a diner on the wrong side of town, the kind of place where the coffee tastes like burned rubber and no one makes eye contact.
Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting everything in sickly green.
The man across from me could be forty or sixty, hard to tell when life's been that unkind.
"You got my money?" His voice rattles like dice in a cup.
I extend the cash but don't let it go far enough to be in his reach , ensuring he remembers who's buying and who's selling.
"Information first."
He leans back and lights a cigarette despite the no-smoking sign. I suppose a small disobedience is probably the least of his sins. "What do you want to know?”
Everything. Nothing. The shape of the truth I've been chasing for ten years, which keeps shifting like desert sand under wind.
"His first wife," I say instead, my voice neutral, bored even. Just another person buying secrets in a city that sells them wholesale. "The one who died. Tell me about her."
"Svetlana?" He takes a drag , then exhales smoke that curls like question marks. "Beautiful woman. Sad eyes. The kind of sad that runs deep, you know? She was born knowing how the story ends."
Momochka.
"She had a lover," I say, a statement, not a question.
"Everyone had lovers." He shrugs. "The Pakhan kept a mistress. Svetlana kept, well, that's what you're asking about, isn't it?"
I wait. Silence is its own pressure, its own violence. I let it build until he decides it's time to stop it.
"Thomas," he says finally. "That was the man's name. American, if you can believe it. Worked for the Pakhan doing...I don't know , something with logistics. Moving things that needed moving."
That confirms my suspicions when I saw the body all those years ago. "What happened to him?" Asking questions you already know the answer to is pivotal.
"Disappeared." The informant taps ash into a coffee cup that's seen better decades. "Right around the time Svetlana died. Rumor was the Pakhan had him killed. Quiet. That kind of killing is not something worth the risk of asking about."
"How did Thomas and Svetlana meet?"
He squints at me through smoke. "Thomas was related to someone in the organization, a cousin, maybe? Hard to keep track. The Bratva's all cousins and brothers.”
My mind spins through possibilities, connections, the web of relationships I've been mapping for years. "This Thomas," I say carefully, "who was his cousin?"
"Don't know for sure." He stubs out his cigarette immediately lighting another. "But there was talk. Always talk, you understand. People saying he was connected high up. That his cousin was someone the Pakhan trusted. Someone close."
Volk.
The realization hits cold and certain. Volk with his strange American accent buried under years of Russian. Volk who was there the night Momochka died. Volk who never mentioned having a cousin. Who never mentioned Thomas at all.
"The Pakhan," I say, my voice sounding distant like it's traveling through water. "When he killed Svetlana, what was the reason?"
"Adultery. Betrayal. The usual." The informant waves his hand, ash drifting like gray snow. "But here's the thing, and this is just talk, understand, some people said the Pakhan was lying. Svetlana was faithful.
"Why?"
"Who knows? Maybe he just wanted an excuse. Everyone knows he wanted a son, and he’s already been married twice since then, suppose he likes to switch things up.
" He leans forward, his breath smelling like coffee and rot.
"The Pakhan lies like other people breathe.
You can't trust anything that comes out of that man's mouth. "
I already knew that. But hearing it confirmed, hearing that Momochka might have been innocent, that Father might have manufactured the entire affair as justification, makes something crack open in my chest.
She died for nothing. For a lie. For Father's paranoia or cruelty or whatever darkness drives men to destroy the things they claim to love.
"One more thing," the informant says, sensing opportunity the way sharks sense blood. "About the daughter."
I go still. Every muscle locked. "What daughter?"
"Svetlana's kid, Yelena." He studies me too closely. "There’s a lot of rumors that she didn’t run away like the Pakhan said. But then again if she did, maybe she's still out there somewhere.”
My heart pounds against my ribs like it's trying to escape. "What happens if she is alive?”
"That's above my pay grade, sweetheart." He gestures at the cash still clutched in my hand. "This buys you what I've told you. Anything else costs extra."
I add another hundred to the pile.
"If she’s not dead, not only can she prove that she is her father’s child now, she’s his real heir, she could have a claim if she could get the backing," the informant says.
The diner tilts. Or maybe I do. Hard to tell when your entire understanding of reality shifts sideways. I’m a risk to his empire. More than even I suspected. And worse, doubts about my death are starting to spread.
"Thanks for the information." I stand, leaving cash on the table for coffee I didn't drink. "Don't contact me again."
"Wasn't planning on it." He lights another cigarette. "But hey, whoever you are, be careful. The Pakhan doesn't lose. He just changes the game until winning looks like his idea."
I drive aimlessly for an hour. Phoenix blurs past my windows ; strip malls and fast food joints and palm trees struggling against a climate that never wanted them. My mind won't settle, won't stop spinning through implications.
Thomas was Volk's cousin. Father killed him. Probably made Volk do it, or watch. That's how Father operates, makes you complicit in the violence so you can't walk away clean.
Which means Volk has his own revenge to seek. His own blood debt to settle.
So why isn't he?
Why is he helping me instead? Why did he save me in the desert? Why is he protecting me now, risking everything to keep me alive when logic says he should want Father dead as much as I do?
Unless he does want Father dead. Unless that's the play.
The thought should make me angry. It should feel like manipulation, like being used , but instead it settles something in my chest. Makes sense of the things that didn't add up. The way he's always there, cleared my path to Igor, orchestrating events I thought were coincidence.
If we're both seeking revenge, if we're both working toward the same goal from different angles, then maybe— My phone rings. Aleksandr.
"Da?"
"I need you for a delivery tonight. Same place as last time."
Father's house. The mansion that holds too many ghosts and too much history.
"What am I delivering?"
"Product, the pharmaceutical kind." Code for drugs. The Pakhan has a craving. "A simple drop, in and out. Two grand for your trouble."
Two grand. Plus another chance to snoop.
"When?"
"Two hours. Car will pick you up at Lush."
He hangs up before I can agree or refuse. Doesn't matter. I'm going regardless.
The same mansion , same guards , same smell of old money and older sins seeping through expensive air.
They frisk me at the door, finding nothing because I'm carrying nothing except the package Aleksandr gave me—shrink-wrapped and innocent-looking. Could be anything. Probably heroin or cocaine.
Thor—my nickname for the blond mountain who escorted me last time—leads me through familiar halls, but instead of going to Father's study, we turn left. Toward the wing I used to live in. Toward rooms I haven't seen in ten years.
My breath catches, but I force it steady.
"Wait here," Thor says, gesturing to a sitting room I recognize. Cream walls, and abstract art Momochka hated. The chair she used to read in, probably replaced, occupies the same space like a ghost.
I wait. Count to one hundred, then stand and move toward the door.
The hallway is empty. No cameras, I checked last time.
The Bratva thinks they're invincible, that no one would dare infiltrate their stronghold.
Arrogance makes people sloppy. I slip into the hall and head toward Father's office because that's where the real information lives.
That's where he keeps the ledgers, the documents, the evidence of every crime he's built his empire on.
The office door is locked, but I've been practicing lockpicking for years, spending hours on YouTube tutorials and practice sets. My hands are steady and my breathing controlled.
Thirty seconds and the lock clicks open.
Inside, everything is exactly as I remember, and I head for the filing cabinets. Locked, but easier than the door. Files organized by date, type, some system that makes sense to Father's ordered mind.
I photograph pages with my phone. Banking records , names of contacts, and shipping manifests for legitimate businesses that front illegal operations. Every click of my camera feels like a small victory.
A floorboard creaks in the hallway. I freeze. Ear pressed to the door. Listening.
Footsteps coming closer. The gait of someone who knows these halls, who belongs here in ways I no longer do. I slip behind the door, making myself small, invisible the way prey does when predators hunt. The footsteps pass. Fade. Silence returns.
I wait two full minutes, then continue photographing. I’m almost done. Just a few more pages and I can—
"Miss?"
The voice behind me nearly stops my heart.
Turning, a maid stands in the doorway. She’s an older woman with a face lined with years of seeing things she shouldn't and forgetting them to survive.
Not Irina. Thank God, not Irina. But her eyes are sharp, taking in my position behind the desk, and the phone in my hand.
"I got lost," I say, smooth and easy, like this is embarrassing instead of incriminating. "I was looking for the bathroom."
"Bathrooms are down the hall. Not in the Pakhan's private office."
"I know. I just..." I let my voice trail off, aiming for confused, apologetic. "I saw the door open and I thought—"
"The door was locked."
Fuck.
"Was it?" I move toward her, slow, non-threatening, just a confused girl who made a mistake. "I'm so sorry. I didn't realize. I'll go back and wait like I was told."
She steps aside, letting me pass, but her eyes follow me. She knows something is wrong. She might not know what or even care, but she knows.
I walk back to the sitting room and wait for Thor to return. Every nerve ending screams that I need to run, to leave, to get out before—
"Sofiya?" A different voice. Male. Familiar in ways that make my skin crawl.
Anatoly stands in the doorway. He's older than I remember. Grayer. Harder. But unmistakably him. The man who carved into my back with enthusiasm. Who laughed the loudest while he robbed me of my innocence. Who told me I was pretty when I screamed.
His eyes travel over me. Assessing. Searching. "You look familiar…Aleksandr's courier," he says slowly.
"I have one of those faces." My voice and hands are steady. Ten years of preparation keeps me controlled when every instinct screams at me to reach for my knife and gut him like I did Igor.
"No." He steps closer. "It's something else. Something about your eyes."
This is it. The moment he recognizes me. The moment everything falls apart.
"Eyes like that..." He tilts his head, smirking as he studies me. "There was a girl, long time ago, she had eyes like yours. Beautiful. Even when she was crying."
My heart pounds so hard I'm sure he can hear it.
Voice distant like he's pulling memory from deep in the earth he continues, "We left her in the—"
The explosion hits.
Real this time. An actual explosion.
The pool house erupts in a concussive blast that rattles windows, shakes foundations, and sends Anatoly stumbling backward. Fire alarms scream and chaos erupts in the hallways—shouting, running, the controlled panic of men trained to handle emergencies but not expecting them here.
Not in Father's fortress.
Anatoly's head snaps toward the sound. His hand goes to his gun , training overriding recognition. "Stay here," he orders, already moving toward the door. Toward whatever catastrophe just bought me precious seconds.
He's gone.
I sit frozen. Every muscle locked. Adrenaline screaming at me to run while my brain tries to process what just happened.
Thor appears in the doorway, face pale. "We need to evacuate. Now."
"What happened?"
"Gas line. The pool house is gone. Everyone out until we're sure the building's secure."
I stand on legs that feel disconnected from my body. I follow Thor through halls filling with smoke and the particular chaos that comes when men trained for violence face threats they can't shoot.
Outside, the mansion glows with emergency lights as fire trucks scream in the distance. Staff huddle in clusters on the lawn while guards sweep the perimeter.
I scan faces, looking for one in particular.
There, across the lawn, half-hidden in shadow near the tree line, watching. Always watching.
Volk.