37. Katya
Katya
While everyone is incredibly nice, I still know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they think I'm a criminal.
I see it in their eyes, and in the way they watch me from the moment they take me out of the car until they put me in an interrogation room. They try to soften it by offering me tea or coffee, which I decline, but when I hear the door lock, I know that this is all just an illusion.
I shiver as I take in my surroundings. I've never been in trouble for anything before. Not at school. Not at work — well, until recently, never.
Despite my family, I am a rule follower. I like rules. I embrace them.
And yet, here I am, about to be arrested.
There isn't much time between that realization and the sound of the door unlocking.
I'm not sure what I expect, but it's not the tall, leggy woman in a perfectly tailored pantsuit.
She's blonde with big eyes and small wrinkles.
Her face reminds me of my mother. There's something soft and kind about it that makes me want to crack.
"I know you said you didn't want anything, but I find that a cup of tea can be helpful in these situations." She smiles as she slides me a steaming cup. I wrap my hands around it, trying to ignore the way Artem's blood stains the paper.
It's still sticky and wet on my shirt.
"I'm Agent Marrow," she says, taking a seat.
I nod. I don't feel the need to introduce myself. Clearly, she knows me.
"I'm going to ask you some questions."
I nod again.
"Do you mind if I record?"
I try to remember if this is good or bad. My knowledge of the law is based on TV shows Lacey likes to watch, and my grandfather constantly talking about how easy public servants were to pay off.
"That's fine." The words are out before I can think too much, and from the small smile, I can see it was the answer she wanted.
I worry that my desire to be agreeable is going to end up with me in jail.
She turns on her recorder, and I hold my breath.
"Ms. Popova," she says, and the name lands strangely — I've been Mrs. Orlov for months now, which is its own specific horror — "can you tell me about your relationship with the Popov network?"
"Nothing," I say, pressing my hands harder into the cup.
"Really?" Her brow raises, and she opens a folder. "You are Viktor Popov's only living relative, correct?"
"Yes, but you asked about the network. I've never been involved in that."
She makes a sound in the back of her throat. "Interesting, considering you're named on forty-seven documents relating to Bratva financial operations in New York, New Jersey, and three offshore accounts registered in the Cayman Islands."
I stare at her, blinking rapidly.
"And before you try to deny it, your signature is on all of these papers." She turns the folder toward me.
I look at one of the documents. She's not wrong. My signature is on a sheet of paper that looks like some sort of financial statement. I start to sweat.
"These go back for years," she says, leaning back. "Not surprising that your grandfather would groom you to take over."
I snort. "Glad that none of this is surprising to you."
Her eyes narrow, and the kind openness on her face disappears. This is a hardened agent.
"I don't know what these are," I say, pushing them back toward her.
"But I haven't done anything illegal." My voice comes out very even, which surprises me, because the inside of my chest is doing something considerably less even.
"I'm a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater.
I have never touched Bratva money, I have never attended a Bratva meeting, I have never?—"
"Your name is on the documents," she says. Simply. Not unkindly.
"My grandfather was a criminal. Forging these would be a drop in the bucket of the kind of things he did.
" I lean forward, trying to get her to understand.
"I don't know why he would do it. You can dig for days, and you aren't going to find anything else.
I've worked hard to distance myself from the Bratva. I can't help my last name."
Her lips purse, and I can't tell if she believes me or not.
"We understand that may be the case." Her voice is even, emotionless. "Which is why we'd like your cooperation in?—"
"My husband was shot tonight." The words come out flat and hard. "By an FBI agent. I watched it happen. I need to know if he's alive."
She looks at me, taken aback. "I can't share?—"
"His name is Artem Orlov. He was taken by ambulance from the house on West Seventy-Second approximately two hours ago with a chest wound." I hold her gaze. I'm not going to break on this. "I need to know if he's alive."
"I understand your concern, but right now I need to focus on?—"
"Nadia Petrova shot him." I watch her expression.
"Your agent. She had him at gunpoint on a back staircase and she shot him.
She was actually trying to shoot me, but he took the bullet.
" He took the bullet. I start shaking. "That's a federal crime, isn't it?
Regardless of who he is and what he's done, an FBI agent shooting an unarmed civilian is?—"
"Ms. Popova." Her voice has shifted slightly. Recalibrating. "I understand you have concerns about Agent Petrova's conduct tonight. That's being addressed separately. Right now?—"
"I want information about my husband's condition in exchange for any cooperation."
She looks at me for a moment before she sighs.
"He's in surgery," she says. "That's all I have."
Surgery. Which means alive, for now.
I release a heavy breath.
"What do you want to know?"
"Now that your grandfather is dead, who is in charge of the Bratva? We've heard it is your husband, but we have absolutely no evidence that Artem Orlov is involved in organized crime. Your name is on everything?—"
She doesn't even finish before Pyotr walks in the door. He's in a suit despite the hour, his expression filled with annoyance.
"Mrs. Orlov," he greets me. "We're leaving."
I blink several times in confusion.
"I am your attorney of record." He produces a card and sets it on the table in front of the agent without looking at her. "Any further questioning will be conducted through me in writing, after we've had adequate time to review the documentation." He looks at me. "Come."
The agent opens her mouth to argue, but Pyotr doesn't let her get a word out.
"Any attempt to detain my client further without charge will result in a motion filed before sunrise," Pyotr says pleasantly.
"And you have a great deal of bullshit to comb through at the moment.
I doubt you want to add a pissed-off judge to your rogue agent issues. " He turns. "Let's go, Ms. Orlov."
I stand.
My legs are steadier than they should be, and I follow Pyotr out.
We're in the hallway before I find my voice. "Since when are you a lawyer?"
"Since Artem decided someone in this operation needed a bar card." He moves me toward the elevator with the same efficient energy Artem uses, which I find both reassuring and annoying. "He left instructions."
"Instructions?"
"For exactly this scenario." He presses the elevator button. "He's thorough."
"They told me he's in surgery."
Something moves across Pyotr's face. The first crack I've ever seen in it. He's fond of Artem, I realize. Not just loyal — they are friends. "We've got men stationed there in case the FBI decides to overstep, or someone gets a bug up their ass and decides to finish the job."
I breathe a small sigh of relief.
The elevator opens. We get in. The doors close and I look at Pyotr's reflection in the brushed steel, thinking about forty-seven documents and my name on all of them.
"Did you know that my grandfather was embezzling money using my name?"
He's quiet for a moment — the calculation of a man deciding how much to say and in what order.
"Fuck, I told Artem this was a mess." He runs his hands through his hair.
"Your grandfather put your name on his financial instruments years ago.
He changed it slightly, so that you were using your mother's last name.
" He pauses. "Everything he built in New York — the accounts, the properties, the shell companies — runs through your name. "
I stare at him, mouth dropping open.
"Why?"
He closes his eyes, clearly wanting to do anything besides this.
"It's easier to do illegal things when someone has a clean record.
You've never been in any trouble. You are the heiress of two large fortunes, legitimate ones.
As long as you didn't do anything major, no one was going to look at a young woman investing money. "
"For how long?"
He looks at the elevator doors. "Not sure.
Viktor was careful about succession planning.
He didn't trust that his sons would all make it — he was right, they all predeceased him — and he didn't trust the men around him.
So he built a structure that funneled everything through his bloodline. " A pause. "You."
The elevator opens. We walk out into a lobby that smells like industrial cleaning products and bad coffee.
"Artem," I say. "He knew."
"It's how he identified you as the key to dismantling Viktor's network." Pyotr's voice is even. Not apologetic, not cruel. Just factual. "Your name was attached to everything. Which meant removing Viktor required either removing you or?—"
"Or marrying me." The words come out flat. "And inheriting everything I was attached to."
"Yes."
I stop walking.
Pyotr stops beside me.
"He used me." I've known this from the moment he threw the sheets on the table, and yet the specific mechanism of it — Viktor's instrument, repurposed as Artem's instrument, my name on decades of criminal infrastructure I never asked for and never knew about — lands differently than the abstraction of it did.
"When he married you, he started working to dismantle and legitimize everything your name is attached to," Pyotr says quietly. "The shell companies, the offshore accounts. Anything that could expose you legally. Since the wedding. Maybe before." He meets my eyes. "And he took a bullet for you."
I start walking again, my legs shaking slightly.
"Can they charge me?"
"Not if I have anything to do with it." His voice is firm in a way that tells me this isn't reassurance; it's a statement of competence.
"You had no knowledge and no access. Viktor kept you deliberately isolated from the operation.
That's a defense." He pauses. "It's also the truth, which helps considerably. "
"But you didn't say 'no,' which means they can find a way."
"There's always a way."
We push through the lobby doors into the cold.
I stop on the pavement.
I think about my grandfather in his study in Moscow, deciding to put a child's name on the architecture of a criminal empire. I think about Viktor at the restaurant, agreeing to the marriage with the ease of a man disposing of an asset he'd already accounted for.
I think about Artem, who came here to destroy Viktor and found the same machinery had been running through me all along.
I am so tired of being other people's infrastructure.
The anger is clean. Cleaner than anything I've felt in months.
Not the tangled, hot fury I've been feeling since Artem stormed into my life, but something colder and more useful.
The anger of a woman who has finally seen the full shape of what was done to her and has decided that she is done being done to.
The door behind us opens.
I turn.
Nadia walks out, and I freeze.
She looks wrong — badge visible but there is something off about her posture. Behind her, two agents flank her at a distance that isn't quite escort but isn't quite not.
Her eyes find mine immediately.
"Katya." Her voice is different from every other time she's spoken to me. The measured professionalism is gone. What's underneath it is something rawer and less controlled. "I need you to understand?—"
"You tried to kill me."
She almost laughs. "Artem was never going to allow you to die. I knew that."
"Bullshit. I didn't know that, so no way you did."
Something moves across her face. Not guilt. The expression of a person who made a calculated decision and is now standing in the aftermath of it and finding the aftermath larger than the calculation accounted for.
"You're going to prison." The professional composure slides back into place, uneven at the edges.
"Everything is in your name — everything Viktor built, you're attached to all of it.
I've been building this case for years and your name is on every document.
Alexei told me. He helped." Her eyes are very bright.
"I'm sorry it happened this way. I didn't want to do it, which is why I tried to get you to turn on Artem.
You give him up, and you save yourself."
"Ms. Petrova." Pyotr's voice, beside me. Quiet. Final. "I'd encourage you to stop speaking."
Nadia looks at him. Then back at me.
"I am sorry." This time I think she might mean it — underneath everything else, underneath the case and the grief and the years of building toward this moment. "Genuinely."
I look at her for a long moment.
Then I turn away.
"Take me to the hospital."