Chapter 17 Raina
RAINA
The Courier is quiet for a moment. I hear faint clicking.
Keys. He’s doing three things at once while he speaks.
“Poor, sweet Raina. Always so easy to trust,” he finally says, his tone carrying a mocking lilt.
“You put your baby to bed and thought you were leaving her in safe hands. Don’t you see Nadia was never the end goal?
It’s you, silly girl. It’s you that I want.
And Anastasia was right where I needed her to be. ”
My hands curl on the table.
“You’re lying,” I answer, even while my voice shakes.
“I don’t need to lie about this,” he replies. “She’s been inside his house for years. Trust like that is earned over time and is usually never subject to suspicion.”
My vision blurs at the edges. I blink it clear.
“You moved her into place,” I repeat.
“Yes,” he says. His voice drops lower, pleased with himself.
“When I found her again in your crew, it was easy. I checked her family, checked her records. Her brother owed money everywhere. Her mother couldn’t afford her pills.
All I had to do was show her the numbers.
She broke in under ten minutes. Most people do. ”
His voice drips with malice, yet somehow, he manages to keep it deceptively calm.
“And she wasn’t the only one. You’d be shocked how many of his men opened their mouths for me.
One had a gambling problem. One had a son in trouble.
One thought Sergei had forgotten him after his last injury.
I didn’t even need to threaten them. I only had to promise them something he never gave them. ”
He lifts one shoulder in a small shrug. “I told them they mattered, and for weak people, that’s always enough.”
An uncomfortable shiver runs up my spine, but I can’t find anything to say.
The Courier continues. “They didn’t even know it was me. I kept it clean. Simple tasks. Door timings. Delivery notes. Guard swaps. Nothing that made noise, nothing they could trace later. But it all built the picture I needed.”
His voice drops to a whisper that’s only just audible. “He built his house on fear and loyalty. I break both. That’s why I win.”
A breath later, he sighs. “That’s why she served me, not him.”
“You’re telling me she worked for you this whole time,” I say. My voice is flat now. It’s the only way I can keep it steady.
“She worked for what gives her the best chance of survival,” he answers smoothly.
I press my thumb hard into my palm. Pain blooms. It helps.
“Did she know about tonight?” I ask. “Did she know you would take me away from my daughter?”
“She knew the cocoa was stronger than usual,” he says. “And that it would let you sleep, after which she’d need to hand you over to another trusted agent. She didn’t know where you would wake. She never asked, and I never told her. I suspect she doesn’t want to imagine you in a cage.”
“I’m not in a cage,” I say, looking around the painted room.
He gives a small sound that might be a smile.
“A cage is a structure that doesn’t let you leave,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be ugly. It only has to hold.”
I stand and walk to the door again. I press my ear to the wood, but I can’t hear anything on the other side. No steps, no voices, no hum of a large building. Outside the window, the trees are still. No cars, no horns, no city sounds. Only wind and some distant bird.
“You brought me to the country,” I say.
“I brought you somewhere quiet,” he answers. “You have been running in noise for years. You think best when the room is simple. I wanted that for this talk.”
“This isn’t a talk,” I say. “This is a show.”
“Of course it is a show,” he says. “Everything is. You of all people should understand that. You pick your clothes and your tone and your stance in every room you walk into at his side. You built a whole persona out of knives and calm. It has served you well.”
“I don’t care what you think I am,” I say. “Tell me what you want.”
He gives a soft inhale.
“There it is,” he says. “The question I have been waiting for.”
The small window with Nadia grows again for a moment. He lets me look at her, then shrinks it. The main part of the screen stays black. No face. Only a voice and a line.
“What I want is simple,” he says. “I want you to stop trying to hold up a structure that is already falling. You don’t need to keep putting your body between Sergei and the bullets he should have gotten years ago.
What you need is to stop patching up old systems and build something new, with someone who’ll still be alive ten years later. ”
“You want me to join you,” I say, one brow cocked up.
“Yes,” he answers. “You know how his business runs and where the real pressure points are, who he pretends to trust and who he actually trusts.” He sighs.
“You’re aware of which accounts shifted from his name and you can help me do what I want to with much less bloodshed.
Nadia will benefit from this too. She’ll be safe, safer than she is with Sergei. ”
I let the words settle. They are heavy and smooth. They slide into places I don’t want them to reach.
“And if I say no?” I ask.
“Then the shape of things changes,” he says. “Not for me. For you.”
I frown at the screen. “You’re going to need to be clearer.”
“It means you will only see Sergei or Nadia once more,” he answers. “To say goodbye.”
I grip the back of the chair. The wood cuts into my palm.
“You’re saying you’ll kill them,” I say.
“I’m saying you will lose them,” he answers.
“Death is only one form of loss. I don’t need to kill Sergei to end him.
I can take his routes, his money, his men, his access.
I can cut the world away from him until he stands in a bare room with a gun and a ledger that mean nothing.
I can leave him breathing on that spot for years while the city forgets his name.
That is a cleaner end than most men in his position ever get. ”
“And Nadia?” I ask. My throat feels raw.
“She will not die by my hand,” he says. “I’m not interested in hurting children. She will live. Where and how depends on many things. Some of those things you control. Some of them you throw away if you spit in my face right now.”
He is careful with the words. He doesn’t promise that no one else will hurt her. He doesn’t promise that his hands are the only ones I should worry about.
“So this is my choice,” I say. “Stand with him and lose them. Stand with you and keep them.”
“Not exactly,” he says. “Stand with him and lose them and yourself. Stand with me and keep a path to them. I’m not asking you to love me.
I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to work with me.
You can still hate me every day. I won’t mind.
Hate is honest. I just need your mind and your hands pointed in my direction instead of his. ”
Silence spreads out between us. The only sound in the room is the soft tick from the stove and the faint hiss of wind against the window.
I walk away from the table and stand by the window again. My reflection sits faintly over the snow and trees. Pale face. Dark hair pulled back. Eyes that have seen too much in too few years.
Sergei is somewhere in that city with his hands in blood and his jaw set. He thinks he can pull me back from anything. He thinks the world will always give him one more route, one more play, one more chance to cut his way through.
Nadia is in her bed with a bear under her chin. She trusts that when she opens her eyes, one of us will be there. Her mother. Her father. Someone who speaks her language and knows her little boats by name.
Anastasia sits in that chair, loyal and not loyal, both at once. A woman who would step in front of a bullet for my child and still turn a blind eye when a stranger tells her to pour a stronger drink.
My palms sweat. My chest aches. I press my forehead against the cool glass and close my eyes for a second.
I see Vera’s body on the floor with blood under her head.
I see Sergei’s face when he realized the Courier had been in his house all along.
I see the way Nadia looked at me when she said she would keep her fists up.
The voice cuts through my thoughts.
“I won’t ask again after today,” the Courier says. “This isn’t a game where you can move back and forth between sides. You have one call.”
I open my eyes and turn. The laptop waits on the table with its clean, black screen and white symbol. Nadia’s sleeping form still glows in the small corner.
“You want my answer now,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “You decide if you stand in front of Sergei and take the blow with him, or if you step aside and help guide where it lands. You decide if your daughter grows up in a house that is always under siege or if she grows up in a house that has learned how to disappear from fire.”
My legs feel both heavy and restless. I walk back to the table and sit. I place my hands flat on the wood so he won’t see them shake. My throat is dry again. I swallow and taste salt from earlier tears I didn’t notice.
He waits. I can feel his attention through the wire. Patient. Focused. Certain that he has set the board in his favor.
I look at Nadia’s image one more time. Her hand twitches in her sleep. She pulls the bear closer to her chest.
I draw a breath that feels too big for my ribs and lean toward the laptop.