Chapter Five
Arkady
Yanis pushes off the wall, looking exasperated, which is normal when he’s dealing with me. “I gotta go. Check on the rest of the operation.” He heads for the stairs, then stops. “Call me later. We need to talk strategy.”
I watch him descend, then turn back to Debra’s door. My hand rests on the handle for a long moment before I push it open.
She’s sitting now, with her knees pulled to her chest, staring at nothing. The medication’s left her edges soft, blurred, but conscious enough to register my presence. She looks impossibly fragile.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, keeping my voice as gentle as I can.
She turns her head slowly, like the movement requires thought. “Floaty. Like I’m… not…” She blinks. Loses whatever she was reaching for. “Disconnected.”
“That’s the sedative Dr. Harrison gave you.”
“I heard him.” Her fingers pick at a loose thread in the blanket. “Talking about… he said I was…” She trails off, words slurring, her brow creasing like she’s listening to something far away. Then, quieter: “Never. He said never.” Her eyes grow distant. “I’m broken,” she whispers.
“You’re not broken, Debra.”
The laugh that comes out of her is wrong—sharp and airless, too old for her face.
“I don’t even… Sometimes I can’t— My name.
Who I…” She pulls harder at the thread. “He called me things. Princess, when he— When I was good. When I did what he… Other things. Other names. I had so many names I forgot which one was—” Her hand jerks, snapping the thread.
She stares at it like she doesn’t know how it got there. “Pretty sure that counts.”
“Counts as what?”
She doesn’t answer. Her eyes have gone somewhere else.
“Debra.” I keep my voice low, even. “You’re Debra McLeod. Twenty-four years old. You have a twin sister, Mirabel, and a father named Peter.”
Her mouth moves. No sound. Then: “Mirabel.”
“That’s right.”
“She’s— Is she—?”
“She’s safe.”
Debra’s gaze snaps to mine with sudden, startling focus. “You’re his son.”
There’s horror in it. Raw, animal recognition—like she’s just smelled smoke.
“I am.”
“Then why…? You can’t— He said his sons were—” She’s shrinking back against the headboard, fingers clawing into the blanket. “He told me about you. He said you were— That you’d—”
“Whatever he told you was a lie.”
“—he said if I ever tried to leave, his sons would—”
“Debra. Look at me.”
She’s breathing too fast. Shallow, panicked gulps. The sedative’s fighting her adrenaline and losing.
“I don’t touch his business,” I say. Slow. Clear. “The trafficking. The girls. None of it. I see you as what you are: his victim. Not his property.”
She’s shaking her head, but I don’t think it’s disagreement. More like her body trying to shake something loose.
“I want to…” She swallows. Tries again. “I want to believe… but he— Every time I believed someone, it was a… There was a man once, who said he’d help, and Gavriil found out, and he…” Her hand moves to her ribs. An unconscious gesture. Old pain. “So I stopped. Believing.”
“I understand.”
“No, you— You can’t!” She stops. Blinks. The brief flare of fight drains out of her as fast as it came, the sedative pulling her back under. Her shoulders drop. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
The quiet that settles between us feels fragile, like thin ice over black water.
Then the dam breaks.
“It’s my fault,” she says, and the words come out fast and shapeless, tumbling, colliding, half of them swallowed before they form.
“The fight. Mira and I… Before the trip, she said… I don’t, I can’t remember what, but I was so— And I said things, terrible— God, I can’t even— And then I left, I just left, and on the trip I was still…
still angry, still stupid, and I went into— I wasn’t supposed to— the forest, the trees, it was—”
Her breath hitches. A sound like something tearing.
“—and if I’d just… if I’d stayed… with the group. Or called her back, said sorry… but I didn’t, because I’m— I was—”
“Debra—”
“—and then the van, and the— There were hands, and I screamed, but nobody— And it was dark for so long, and I kept thinking Mira will come, Mira will find me, because she always… When we were little, she always—”
She’s rocking now. Micro-movements, back and forth, the blanket bunched in both fists. Her eyes are unfocused, fixed on a point in the distance.
“—but she didn’t come. Nobody came. And I stopped. After a while, I stopped waiting, because… because maybe she was glad. Maybe she— The things I said to her—”
“Debra. Stop.”
Not harsh, but firm enough to cut through. Her mouth keeps moving for a second, then closes. Her jaw trembles.
“None of this is your fault.” I hold her gaze, make sure the words sink in. “The fight. The forest. The last six years. None of it. That’s on my father and the people who work for him.”
She stares at me, her expression hazy. “I need…” She lifts a hand, lets it fall. “I need her to know I didn’t… that I still…”
“She’ll know.”
“You don’t— She probably thinks I’m—”
“She’ll know, Debra.”
Another silence. Her eyelids flutter, the sedative finally gaining ground. When she speaks again, her voice is scarcely there.
“I can’t think. Everything is… The words keep… I can’t hold on to them. They go somewhere and I…” She presses her palms against her temples. “I used to be smart. I think I was smart. Before.”
“You need rest.”
“I don’t… rest isn’t— When I close my eyes, he’s—” She stops herself. Swallows whatever she was about to say, like it might burn her from the inside. “I’m so tired I don’t remember how to think. But I can’t sleep. Do you understand? I can’t.”
“I have a place,” I say. “Somewhere you can stay. Quiet. Safe. A lock on the door—from the inside. No one gets in unless you let them.”
She doesn’t move. Just stares at me with Mirabel’s eyes gone hollow, processing the word safe like it’s in a language she used to speak.
“Where?”
“You’ll see.”
It takes her a moment—long enough that I think she might refuse—but she finally unfolds herself from the bed and follows me into the hall.
We walk in silence, past rooms that mean nothing to her, down corridors she’ll never learn, until we reach the east wing’s end.
The door I keep locked. The room no one enters.
My hand hesitates on the key. Just for a second. This is Mishka’s space. The only place where I let myself remember him without the weight of everyone else’s grief pressing down. The urn. The gun. The ghost of my fifteen-year-old self, who destroyed everything he touched.
And I’m giving it away.
I unlock the door and push it open.
Debra steps inside slowly. Her hand trails along the wall, then the shelf, fingers ghosting over the urn without asking. She takes in the kitchenette, the bathroom, the bed tucked against the far wall. It’s small. Self-contained. Separate from the rest of the house and all its complications.
“How lovely,” she breathes, and there are tears on her face now. “Thank you. For everything. All I need is a bed, and you’ve given me…”
She doesn’t finish. Can’t, maybe.
Blyad.
I should say something. Should explain what this room means, why it costs me something to let her have it. But the words won’t come, so I just nod toward the lock.
“You can lock the door. No one will bother you here.”
“Okay.”
I step back into the hallway, the door shutting behind me. Then I walk away from Mishka’s room—from the gun that killed him, from the urn that holds what’s left—and try not to think about what it means that I can give up his space but not his guilt.
I take a few strides away, then pull out my phone. Yanis answers on the second ring.
“That was fast.”
“Any updates on the rest of the girls?”
“Stefan and I got them sorted.” His voice is rough, tired. “Some were straight kidnappings. Others got fed the usual lies—legitimate jobs, better opportunities, all the shit these operations use.”
“Sex slaves for rich fucks who think money buys them people.”
“Da.”
I rub my temple, where it feels like a blood vessel is throbbing. “Where are they now?”
“Shelter that specializes in trafficking victims. Medical care, therapy, legal assistance if they want it. Stefan made sure they understand they’re protected. No one’s coming for them.”
“Khoroshiy. Good.” I close my eyes. “The traffickers?”
“In custody. Our custody, not official channels. Can’t risk them making calls or cutting deals before we extract what we need. They’re at the property outside Kamloops. Stefan’s handling interrogation.”
Stefan’s interrogations are thorough. And brutal. The thought doesn’t bother me as much as it should.
“And Father doesn’t know?”
“Not yet.” Yanis pauses. “He’s expecting delivery tomorrow. Going to find an empty cellar and his Princess gone. He’ll figure out it was us, Arkady. Maybe not today, but soon.”
I open my eyes, stare at the ceiling. “Let him.”
Silence on the line.
“Let him figure it out,” I repeat. “I don’t fucking care anymore. Let him know his sons dismantled his operation. Maybe he’ll finally understand we’re not playing his game.”
“You realize this means war. Once he knows, there’s no walking it back.”
“We’ve been at war since I was fifteen and figured out what he really is. This just makes it official.”
Yanis exhales—slow, controlled. “All right. Then we finish it properly. No half measures.”
“Agreed.”
“Get some sleep. You sound like hell.”
“I’ll sleep when this is over.” When Mirabel’s safe, when Debra can say her own name without flinching, when my father’s no longer breathing. Pick one.
“About Mirabel—”
“Don’t.”
“You can’t hide this forever. She’ll find out, and when she does—”
“I said don’t.”
He lets it go. “Call if you need anything.”
The line goes dead. I stand there a moment, and wonder how many more secrets I can carry before the weight of them drags me under.