Chapter 19 Sergei
SERGEI
The screen goes black.
For a second I keep staring at my own reflection in the dark glass with my hands laid flat on the desk. The air in the room feels heavy and still.
Nadia shifts on my lap. Her fingers twist in the fabric of my shirt.
“Papa,” she whispers. “She’s gone again.”
I pull my eyes away from the screen and look at her.
Her face is blotchy from crying and her hair sticks up in soft pieces.
My heart begins to ache for her, and I gather her in my arms. “She’s not gone, little angel,” I softly tell her.
“She’s alive, just not here. But alive is good.
Alive means we’re going to find her and bring her home. ”
She sucks in a breath and nods, but I see the doubt.
Anastasia stands a few steps away, shoulders hunched, eyes red. She’s holding a glass of water in both hands, but she hasn’t taken a drink. “What now?” She asks quietly.
“Now we work,” I answer curtly. I shift Nadia onto the chair beside mine and turn her to face me. I crouch so my eyes are level with hers.
“Little star,” I say. “The song. Do you remember what Mama sang?”
She nods fast. “Yes. I remember. I tried to hold it in my head.”
“Good,” I say with an approving nod. “We go slow now. You tell me every line, even the parts you think are silly. I’ll write them down. There is no wrong answer. If you forget something, you tell me that too.”
I pull a pad and pen from the drawer. My hand feels too big for it, but I force the pen to move steadily. “Start from the beginning.”
She scrunches her face, then starts. “Little house on the narrow white lake,” she says. “Tall dark trees and one crooked birch.”
“Tall dark pines,” I say. “Did she say pines or trees?”
Nadia frowns. “Pines,” she says after a second. “She said pines before. Trees later.”
I write it down.
“Next,” I say.
“Old stone dam where the water runs thin,” she says slowly. “Road from the city with the broken third bridge.”
Her small tongue trips on “third”. She says it again until it comes out clean. I write every word.
Anastasia steps closer. “You think this is a code?” she asks, brows knit together
“I know it is a code,” I reply. “Stay back, Nastya. Let her talk.”
She stops, realizing I’m not in the headspace to explain things to her. Her eyes move from me to Nadia and back. “Second verse,” I say to Nadia. “The one with the town.”
She takes a breath.
“Snow on the road past Klin’s cold sign,” she says carefully. “Blue roof line and carved red birds. Old well ring with three iron hooks. Two hours north when the roads stay clean.”
She looks proud when she finishes that long line. I can’t help it. My chest softens.
“You did well,” I say. “Very well.”
I write each part. Klin. Snow. Blue roof. Red birds. Well ring. Hooks. Two hours north.
“Again,” I say. “So we seal it.”
She repeats the verse. The words stay the same. That is good.
“Last verse,” I say. “Do you remember the one with the fox?”
She grins a little. “I liked that one,” she says.
“I know you did,” I say. “Tell me.”
“Little star, count three tall pines,” she says. “One small path past the tallest tree. Door with a fox and a bright red sun. Knock two times and then again three.”
She holds up her fingers as she counts. Two, then three. I write the knock pattern on the side of the page and circle it.
“Is that all?” I ask.
“She said also to remember the crooked birch again,” Nadia says. “So I made a picture in my head. Three tall pines and one bent birch.”
I add that note.
“Anything else new?” I ask. “Any other strange word?”
She shakes her head. “No. Then he said time. Then it went away.”
I close my eyes for a moment. I see the shape of the north road in my mind.
I see the sign for Klin that stands by the highway.
I see the thin lakes past it. I see the old dam I visited once during a winter run.
I see a line of cottages around a narrow lake, blue roofs against snow.
We used one of those houses for storage one season.
We stopped after a problem with customs. The house stayed on a list of assets.
We never sold it. It was too far, too rotten, and we had better places.
I open my eyes again. Anastasia has moved closer. She stands just behind Nadia’s chair now. Her hand hovers near the backrest, not quite touching.
“She remembers a lot,” Anastasia says softly. “That little head holds more than we think.”
“Yes,” I say. “Her mother trained her well.”
A brief shadow passes over her face at that. It’s gone quickly, but I see it. She was the one in the room when Raina still stood. She was the one who brought the cocoa.
“Papa,” Nadia says.
“Yes,” I say and focus on her again.
“Are we going there?” she asks. “To the fox door house?”
“Do you want the full answer,” I ask, “or the gentle one?”
She thinks for a second. “Full,” she says.
I nod. “Yes,” I say. “We are going there. I will go. I will bring men. We will find that house.”
“And Mama,” she says.
“I will do everything I know to bring her back,” I say.
The words come out steady, but inside there is a hard edge. I have gone to war for less than this. I have burned whole chains of business for less than this. For Raina and for my daughter, I will cut through whatever is in front of me.
Nadia looks at the dark screen. “I don’t want to stay here,” she says suddenly. “Not in this house.”
I straighten.
“Why?” I ask.
She presses her lips together. Her small fingers twist the bear’s ear. Tears rise in her eyes again, but she fights them.
“When Mama went away, I was here,” she says. “I was in my room. I drank cocoa. Then I slept. When I woke up, she was gone.”
Her voice shakes. She swallows.
“I don’t feel safe here,” she says. “I don’t want to sleep in that room. I don’t want to sleep with the bears here. I want to go with you.”
Her words hit me straight. Behind her, Anastasia’s hand lands on the back of the chair at last. Her knuckles are white. “Nadia, no,” Anastasia says quickly. “Your father is going to a dangerous place. You can’t go with him.”
“I didn’t say with him,” Nadia says stubbornly.
“I said not here. I can go somewhere else. I can go to Babushka’s house.
” She means my mother’s mother, who is dead.
Then she frowns. “No. She is in the ground. I can go to Aunt Tanya. Mama told me stories about her when we were hiding. She’s the kind one with the cat that scratches your boots. ”
She says it in a rush, like she pulled it from the bottom of a drawer.
My aunt. My mother’s older sister, who lives in a small building in a quiet district two lines away.
She never took my money for much and lives on her pension, her plants, and her cat.
I send her gifts behind other names. She always knows and never complains or asks questions about my work.
Raina met her once many years ago and liked her.
I have a good feeling she’ll love Nadia.
It isn’t the worst idea.
“I can keep her here,” Anastasia interjects. Her voice is too quick. “This is a fortress, Sergei. We have steel, guards, the safe room. I know the protocols. I will stay with her every second.”
I look at her.
Her pupils are large. There is sweat at her hairline. Her hand still rests on the chair. I think of the cocoa and of Raina’s slow fall into sleep, and of the Courier saying his hands move inside my house.
My skin tightens. “I know the protocols,” I say coldly. “I wrote them.”
She flushes. “Of course,” she says softly.
I stand and scoop Nadia up. She clings to my neck at once. “We go step by step,” I say. “First we write everything down. Then we move you somewhere safe. Then I go hunt.”
I turn to the desk again. “Andrei,” I call through the open door.
He appears almost at once. He has been just outside, waiting. His hand rests on the gun at his hip. “Yes, Pakhan,” he says.
“Get me full maps of the area north of Klin,” I say. “I want every narrow lake with a dam, every old cottage row, every roof line marked blue in the last survey. I want property records for houses we ever held there. I want logs for any title transfers in the last ten years in those strips.”
“Yes,” he says. “I’ll start now.”
“Take Kirill in with you,” I add. “He will help cross-check against old shipment routes.”
Andrei nods and goes.
I look back at Anastasia.
“You help Nadia pack a small bag,” I say. “Enough for two nights. Clothes, favorite toys, her toothbrush. Nothing else. No new gifts. No devices. No watches. Only what she already owns and trusts.”
Her mouth opens, then closes.
“You’re sending her out,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “To my aunt.”
“You’ll need someone to help with the child there,” she says. “Your aunt is old.”
Her words are true. The speed of them still makes my neck itch.
“We’ll see,” I say. “For now, you pack the bag.”
She nods and steps forward to take Nadia.
My daughter clings harder. “I stay with Papa,” she says.
I stroke her hair. “I’m right here, little angel. No one will harm you in front of me.”
She loosens her grip slowly and lets Anastasia take her hand.
“Come, little one,” Anastasia says softly. “We’ll choose your warmest socks.”
They walk down the hall. I watch their backs. Anastasia moves with care. She bends her head to listen. She doesn’t touch her phone or look around. Anyone else would see a perfect nanny.
I see the way her eyes slid to the screen when the man's voice cut the call and how her body went still when he said the old world wants to die. She tried to argue against moving Nadia out, and that part bothers me. If I kill my soldiers randomly, I become a weak Pakhan who acts out of impulse. So I need good reason, but I’m not risking my daughter’s life waiting around for it.
And I remember something Raina said weeks ago, when we still thought the worst was behind us. We stood in the kitchen, late, with the lights low. Nadia slept. Anastasia had gone home for the night.
“She always knows when a delivery comes,” Raina said, half amused, half curious. “Even when we don’t tell her. She hears the knock, she hears the wheels on the hall, she’s there before the guard. That is a talent.”
At the time, I had smiled. Now that memory sits wrong.
Andrei and Kirill come in with laptops and printed maps. They spread them on the desk. I focus on the paper. I can’t afford to lose time in suspicion. That comes later.
Kirill drops a stack of old route charts beside the property list.
“I marked everything we ever held near Klin,” he says. “Cottages, warehouses, garages. Half of these we never used after the first year. The dam here.” He taps one map. “It matches the line your daughter sang. Narrow lake. Old stone dam. I remember we used to say it was a good spot to drown a car.”
He catches himself.
“Sorry,” he says.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Show me.”
He points to a thin blue ribbon of water, a small swollen part in the middle. A short dam line. A ring of houses.
“The state calls this Lake Serebryanka,” he says. “Locals call it something else. There is a line of twelve cottages on the north shore. We held number eight for one season. Blue roof. Red trim. Carved animals on the door. I do not remember which.”
I remember. “It fits,” I say.
“Yes,” Kirill says. “Third bridge on the road is half broken since the flood several years ago. The pavement falls off on one side. You always curse there.”
Andrei runs his finger down a list.
“The title to that cottage moved three times in ten years,” he says. “It went from a holding company we used to a dummy name in Kazan, then to a private owner two years ago. The last change has no clean trail. Shell company. Cyprus. Standard tricks.”
“So someone wanted it off my books,” I say.
“Yes,” he says.
“Then we have our place,” I say. “We move tonight.”
Andrei hesitates. “Pakhan,” he says, “there is one more thing.”
“Say it,” I snap.
“The shell company that first took the title from us belonged to an internal account,” he says.
“It shows on old logs from twelve years ago. Before I came. The name on the account is someone you grew up with. Someone who worked for you in the early days. The same person handled logistics for some of your first warehouses.”
My neck tightens.
“Show me,” I say.
He flips the file and slides a sheet toward me.
The name on the line is one I have not seen in years. It sits on the paper, clear and calm. My vision sharpens around it.
He was a boy from my old block. From the same gray buildings.
He slept two bunks down in the children's home when my mother could not keep me for a year.
I gave him his first real jacket when we were fifteen.
I pulled him into my crew when I started rising.
He ran numbers, carried messages, watched doors.
He wanted more. He always wanted more. The last time we spoke, he asked for a bigger cut.
I shut him down. He disappeared soon after.
I heard later that he took some of my data, moved small sums, sold small secrets.
Nothing large enough to crush me, but enough to stain his name.
I remember the security report from that time. “He’s not loyal,” it said. “But he is clever and very greedy. He feels the world owes him what you built.”
I thought he was dead now. Or off in some minor crew. The Courier uses a different name. A mask. But this trail is not small.
“Save this,” I say quietly. “Don’t say his name outside this room.”
Andrei nods and tucks the paper under the other files.
“Could be anyone,” Kirill says. “Shells can use stolen names.”
“It could,” I say. “It feels wrong in my bones that it is a chance.”
I stand.
“We move in one hour,” I say. “Kirill, you build the team for the cottage run. Twelve men total. Two cars. No convoy. No heavy weapons that make noise on the road. We go in as hunters, not as an army. Vlad stays here on house defense. Andrei stays in control.”
“Yes,” Kirill says.
He leaves to make the calls.