Chapter 10 Sergei
SERGEI
The knock on my shoulder is small, but her hand’s shaking.
“Sergei,” Raina says. “Wake up. Now.”
I come up hard from sleep, hand going straight for the gun on the nightstand. The room is dark except for a pale glow from the doorway. Raina’s hair is a loose shadow around her face, my shirt hanging off one shoulder, eyes wide but clear.
“What is it?” I ask, already swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
“Concierge line,” she says. “There’s a parcel downstairs. Addressed to Nadia. I’ve got the feed. You're going to want to see it.”
That wakes everything else. I grab my domashniy khalat from the chair, dark gray cashmere, and shrug into it as we move down the hall. Guards by the elevator door straighten when they see my face.
On the laptop in the office corner, the lobby camera shows a slice of marble and glass. The concierge stands behind his desk, hands flat. In front of him, on the polished wood, sits a white box tied with a black ribbon. A small tag swings gently when the air system cycles.
“Who touched it?” I ask.
“Only the courier,” the guard says. “Never showed his face. Baseball cap, scarf, head down. He slid the box onto the desk and was gone in four seconds. Hopped on a black bike and disappeared.
“Anyone follow him?”
“Nothing on the feeds,” he says. “They studied our angles first.”
I inhale, long and controlled, then hit the intercom for the inner team.
“Garage,” I say. “We’re going down. I want one of ours at the lobby to lift the parcel. Gloves. Bring it through the service elevator and meet me under the camera grid. Keep the bomb kit ready. Clear?”
“Clear,” Kirill’s voice answers, sharper than usual. Sleep is gone from all of us now.
I quickly dress in black pants and a T-shirt, then throw a long wool jacket over it. Boots. Gloves stuffed into one pocket. Pistol into the other. Raina catches my sleeve as I head for the elevator.
“Don’t let him see you on the lobby cameras,” she says. “If he’s watching, your showing up tells him everyone he wants is here.”
“I don’t intend to give him that pleasure,” I answer.
The private elevator hums as it drops. Two of my men ride with me, backs to the walls, shoulders squared. One carries a black case.
“Power level in the garage?” I ask.
“Full,” the taller one says. “All cameras live. No loops detected.”
The doors slide open to concrete and fluorescent light. The garage smells of oil and old snow that melts into dirty puddles and never fully leaves. Cameras perch in every corner, their red eyes blinking steadily. We don’t wait long.
The service elevator at the far end opens, and Kirill steps out, parcel in hand. He holds it at arm’s length, gloved fingers tight.
“From the concierge,” he says, crossing to the table we pulled under the brightest light. I nod at the bomb tech. He opens his case. We step back while he works, checking for wires, residue, anything that wants to end the morning early.
“Nothing active,” he says after a minute. “No obvious triggers. No mass. If there’s a surprise, it’s small. Safe enough to open if we control the space.”
It’s still a risk. But the Courier isn’t interested in blowing us up yet. He wants us awake.
“Do it,” I say.
He slits the tape on the underside with a thin blade, lifts the lid carefully.
Inside, nestled in white tissue, rests a child’s music box. Old-fashioned, painted pale blue, edges chipped, a little brass key on one side. On top of it sits a folded note the size of two fingers.
The tech scans again, then nods. “Clean.”
I pick up the note between thumb and forefinger. The paper is cheap, stiff. Neat black letters run across it. “Play me for her.”
I fold the note into a hard little knot and set it back inside. The music box weighs almost nothing. A child’s keepsake, twisted into a threat. I turn the key twice. It catches. A moment later, the melody begins, thin and sweet in the concrete space. Raina stiffens.
“Spi, moya malen’kaya zvezda…” the tiny mechanism sings. Sleep, my little star.
Raina makes a small sound behind me. Something in her splits. Her hand lifts to her mouth like she’s trying to hold it in. I cross to her in two steps. Her eyes are too bright, almost fevered.
“It’s my song.” Her voice breaks. Her face is flushed. Not with fear. Rage. The Courier touched something he had no right to touch.
Raina is right. The message isn’t for the child. It’s for her. I let it play for exactly four lines, then close the lid with a click. The last notes cut off, hanging in the air.
“Bag it,” I tell the tech. “Radiation, prints, trace. Then lock it in the case. No one else touches it.”
Kirill clears his throat. “The tag,” he says. “I saw it before we wrapped it. It had her whole name. Nadia Raina Mirova. Age four. In neat handwriting.”
My hand curls into a fist.
“We change that paperwork,” I say. “Soon.”
The apartment is too bright for the hour. Nadia is awake, small and tense, curled against Vera on the bed. Vera’s face is taut. “She refuses to sleep without her papa,” she says, helpless.
I sit beside the bed and tuck Grisha into Nadia’s hands.
“Sleep,” I murmur.
She shakes her head, voice small. “I want my papa.”
Her eyes lift to mine—the same smoky gray gaze, searching, familiar in a way that hits bone-deep. I lean closer before I can think better of it.
“I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m your papa.” I kiss her forehead.
Raina stands in the doorway, one hand on the frame. Her back straightens. Her expression goes soft first, then taut. A truth she knew and still wasn’t ready to hear this way.
I sit on the edge of the bed so my face is level with hers.
“Yes,” I say again. The words are heavy but right. “I’m your father.”
“Like in the stories?” Nadia asks. “With bears and kings and fighting?”
“Sometimes,” I say. “I fight. I read stories badly. I burn pancakes. But I’m here. For you and your mommy.”
She studies my face, looking for lies. She doesn’t find any. I can give her this one thing clean.
Raina nods from the doorframe, eyes wet, mouth tight—small permission, small surrender, a warning and a blessing in the same breath.
I stay until her breathing settles. Then I stand and pull the door. Vera agrees to stay with her. We’re all afraid of the dark. Some of us just hide it better.
Back in the main room, I take out my phone and scroll to a familiar contact.
Mikhail. Quiet, careful, good with firewalls and lies. The one whose signature Raina thinks she saw in the erased hour. If he's clean, I want to know. If he’s dirty, I want to see him hang himself with his own code.
I make the call.
He answers on the second ring, voice smooth, alert. “Da, Sergei.”
“Are you well enough to come to work?”
He coughs slightly before answering. “Yes.”
“I have some network questions,” I say. “New site, new cameras. I want eyes on their traffic now, not tomorrow. Bring your kit to my city apartment. Half an hour.”
“Of course,” he says. “You want me alone?”
“Yes.”
A small pause. “I'm on my way.”
I hang up. Raina, who heard every word from her place near the window, crosses her arms tighter.
“You’re going to test him,” she says.
“I’m going to watch him,” I answer. “You’ll handle what he touches.”
I slide the laptop toward the center of the table.
Raina has already armed the decoy trace, her little tripwire hidden inside the system, something that only reacts when someone uses Mikhail’s exact method of covering his tracks.
If he touches the wrong file, the screen will show a small flicker in the corner.
Nothing dramatic. Just enough to confirm what we already suspect.
Half an hour later, the elevator buzzes. One of my guards checks the hallway camera, announces it is clear, and waves him in.
Mikhail steps into the apartment with a slim black backpack slung over one shoulder.
He looks exactly as he always has—hair brushed back, wire-frame glasses, sweater stretched at the elbows, neat movements of a man who lives behind screens instead of sunlight.
He gives a tired smile that never reaches his eyes.
“Using this place for more than a storage locker now?” he asks lightly.
“Sit,” I tell him, pointing at the desk. “There’s a breach. I want everything inspected before the day shift reports in.”
“Sure thing.” He drops into the chair and unpacks his laptop.
Raina stays by the window, pretending to watch the city. I can see her reflection in the glass. Her eyes are fixed on the monitor, waiting.
Mikhail plugs into my network. He moves fast—too fast—opening internal files without asking which ones I want. His fingers skim through directories that have nothing to do with diagnostics. He minimizes windows the moment he opens them, almost as if he doesn’t want me to see what he’s touching.
Then he does the one thing Raina expected him to do. He opens a hidden admin panel. It’s the same panel used to erase security footage.
He shouldn’t even know it exists.
The moment he clicks it, the decoy trace triggers. A tiny symbol flashes in the corner of the screen—just once—but it might as well be a gunshot.
Raina sees it in the glass. So do I.
Her breath catches. My pulse doesn’t rise, but something inside me clamps down hard. The traitor is sitting in my chair, ten feet from us, hand-deep in the system he helped destroy.
He has no idea he’s been caught. He reaches for another command, humming under his breath, tapping keys he thinks none of us recognize. I start to speak.
The lights cut out.
Every bulb in the apartment dies at once, plunging us into complete darkness. The city still glows beyond the windows, but inside there is nothing. For a heartbeat, no one moves. Then the speakers crackle.