8. Yaromir
YAROMIR
By the second day after the wedding, the city is already full of rumors. Anya Sokolova ran because she panicked. Anya Sokolova ran because Dmitri insulted her. Anya Sokolova ran because she had a lover. Anya Sokolova ran because her father’s debts finally came for her.
People are always comfortable inventing stories about women who are not there to defend themselves.
I don’t care about the rumors. I want facts.
So I send men.
Not to kick doors in. Not yet. That draws attention, and attention makes frightened girls disappear faster. I send them to the kinds of places a woman runs to when she has cash, pride, and no plan.
Pawn shops. Cheap hotels. Cash-only rooms. Train stations. Pharmacies that rent upstairs rooms without paperwork. Small restaurants that pay staff under the table.
On the third evening, Viktor comes to my study with a name.
“Old jeweler near the eastern market,” he says. “He bought a diamond bracelet from a girl matching her description.”
I look up from the papers on my desk. “When?”
“Two days ago.”
“Did she give a name?”
“No. Paid in cash. Kept her scarf up. He said she looked tired and nervous.”
I lean back in my chair.
Tired and nervous.
It irritates me that those are the words I notice.
“What bracelet?” I ask.
Viktor places a photo on my desk.
I recognize it. Not because it matters, but because Dmitri has predictable taste. Thin diamonds, delicate clasp, expensive enough to apologize with but not personal enough to mean anything.
A guilt gift.
“She sold this?”
“Yes.”
“Only this?”
Viktor pauses. “That is all the jeweler saw.”
So she needs money, but she is still careful.
Good.
“Where did she go after?”
“He doesn’t know. But one of his boys saw her walk toward the old pharmacy block.”
That gives us the next thread.
By nightfall, we know she has rented a small room above a closed pharmacy under the name Anna. By morning, we know she’s working in the kitchen of a drive-through place called Misha’s.
When Viktor tells me that, I don’t answer for several seconds.
Anya Sokolova behind a fryer. The image is so absurd I nearly dismiss it. Then I think of her pride. Her ruined wedding. Her father’s fear. Dmitri’s carelessness.
No, not absurd.
Desperate.
There’s a difference.
I should leave it there. I have the information I need. She’s alive. She’s hidden, badly but not stupidly. She’s earning cash. She has not yet fallen into the hands of my father’s men.
That should be enough.
It isn’t.
That evening, one of my men calls again. “She left work with another girl,” he says. “They’re heading to Venera.”
My mood turns cold at once. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I stand before he finishes speaking.
Venera is not mine, but I know the place.
Everyone with eyes knows the place. It survives in the gaps respectable men create for themselves.
Bad music, cheap liquor, private rooms upstairs, girls who come in needing money and leave owing more than they made.
It’s the kind of club that pretends not to sell women while making the arrangements in the hallway.
Anya has no idea where she’s going.
Or maybe she does, and she’s more desperate than I thought.
I go myself.
Viktor doesn’t question me in the car. He knows better. The city passes dark and wet outside the windows, neon blurring across the glass. I sit in silence, jaw tight, thinking of her in that restaurant corridor. White dress. Defensive little mouth. My mother’s ring on her hand.
I don’t know where the ring is now.
Sold, hidden, thrown away, still with her.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter.
That is a lie.
Venera squats between a betting shop and a closed currency exchange, the red sign above the entrance flickering like it’s too tired to stay alive. Two guards stand outside smoking, both of them pretending to be harder than they are.
We don’t use the front. The side door opens the moment Viktor speaks to the right man.
Inside, the club is worse than I remember. Low ceiling. Red bulbs. Smoke hanging thick enough to sting the eyes. The floor shines with spilled liquor. Men sit in booths half-hidden by shadow, laughing too loudly with women who smile like their rent depends on it.
I find her almost immediately.
Anya stands near a table in a black dress that’s too tight, too short, and clearly not hers.
She keeps pulling at the hem when she thinks no one is looking.
Her hair is pinned badly, strands slipping around her face.
She’s trying to smile at the men in the booth, but the smile keeps failing at the edges.
She thinks she understands attention.
She doesn’t understand this kind.
A man at the table leans toward her.
Leonid Markov.
I make it my business to know every cockroach that crawls through this city, especially the ones who survive by feeding on desperate women. My father only notices men when they become useful or threatening; I notice them while they are still small enough to crush.
Leonid finds girls at clubs like this and offers them better money elsewhere. Elsewhere usually means a locked room, a passport taken, a debt invented.
I watch his hand close around Anya’s wrist, and everything in me stills.
She freezes. Then she smiles, small and polite, trying to pull free without making trouble. That makes my anger worse.
She’s trying to be careful because she knows she is alone.
Leonid says something. She answers. He keeps holding her.
I have killed men for less.
Viktor stands close enough to speak without looking at me. “Do you want him removed?”
“No.”
My voice is calm. Too calm.
Because I have already decided.
Leonid Markov is dead.
Not because he’s a trafficker, though that would be reason enough. Not because he works out of a club that should have been burned to the ground years ago.
Because he touched her.
Anya gets away from him, and flees toward the service hallway. Leonid waits maybe thirty seconds before following. I move after him.
By the time I reach the corridor, the music is muffled behind the walls. The hallway smells of bleach, beer, and damp concrete. A single bulb flickers above the back exit.
Then I hear her.
“Let go of me.”
Leonid has her by the arm, dragging her toward the side door. She tries to twist away, but he’s heavier, stronger, used to girls being frightened into silence.
My hand goes inside my coat.
“Stop fighting,” he snaps. He shoves her against the wall hard enough that her head jerks back.
That’s when everything inside me goes quiet.
I have always trusted that quiet. Rage makes men sloppy. Quiet makes them accurate.
I draw my gun.
Then Anya surprises me.
She stops pulling away. For half a second, I think fear has caught up with her. Then I see her shift her weight, see the anger cut through her panic, see the exact moment she decides she has had enough. She drives her knee up between his legs with everything she has.
Leonid folds with a strangled sound and drops to his knees. “You bitch,” he grunts.
For one brief moment, I’m impressed. She’s shaking. She’s outmatched. She has no training, no weapon, no backup, and no idea how bad this could have become. But she fights back.
When Leonid reaches for her again, I shoot him.
The shot cracks through the corridor, loud enough to punch through the music. Leonid jerks once, shock passing over his face before he falls sideways onto the concrete.
Anya screams. Blood spatters across her dress and one bare thigh. She stares at him, frozen, her mouth open, breath coming too fast.
I stay where the light does not fully reach me.
The back door of the club slams somewhere behind her. Voices rise. She looks once at Leonid’s body, once at the blood on her dress, and then survival finally takes over.
She runs.
I let her.
Viktor appears at the end of the corridor a moment later, eyes moving from the body to me. “Should I stop her?”
“No.”
He waits.
I lower the gun. “She’s scared enough.”
Viktor looks at Leonid. “This will make noise.”
“Then quiet it.”
He nods once and gets to work.
I turn toward the exit Anya used, but she’s already gone into the alley, swallowed by the dark city she still doesn’t understand.
Viktor crouches beside Leonid’s body, checks his pulse only because procedure matters, not because either of us expects a different result. Then he looks toward the door where Anya disappeared. “She won’t get far in those shoes.”
“I know.”
“Do you want me to send someone after her?”
I look down the hallway. There’s blood on the floor, a dead man at my feet, and the faint echo of her scream still caught somewhere in my head.
“No,” I say. “Not yet.”
Viktor doesn’t argue, but I can feel the question in his silence.
Why?
I don’t answer it. I’m not sure I can.
The club music keeps thudding through the walls as if nothing has happened. Bass, laughter, glass breaking somewhere in the main room. Venera continues breathing around us, filthy and alive, while Leonid Markov lies cooling on the concrete.
A door opens at the far end of the corridor. One of the club men steps in, broad and tattooed, probably sent to check on the noise. He stops when he sees the body.
Then he sees me, and all the color leaves his face.
“Yaromir Volkov,” he says, voice cracking slightly.
I look at him.
He swallows so hard I see it move down his throat. His eyes flick to the gun in my hand, then back to my face, then to the scar, as if he needs to confirm I’m really standing in his hallway.
“P-pakhan,” he stutters, correcting himself.
I don’t react.
People have started calling me that lately. Not to my face at first. In whispers. In back rooms. In the space between my father’s weakening grip and my own hand closing around the city.
A title that once belonged to my father without question. Now the question exists.
That is enough.
I do not need men to say the word. I only need them to understand what happens when they choose wrong.
The club man lowers his head. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“No,” I say. “You didn’t.”
His throat works again. “I heard a shot.”
“Did you?”
“I mean, I thought I heard something.”
“Better.”
He nods too quickly. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
Viktor rises beside the body. “Who owns the hallway cameras?”
The man hesitates.
I take one step toward him.
He answers immediately. “Office upstairs. Local drive. No cloud.”
“Bring it,” Viktor says.
The man looks at me for permission before moving.
My power is growing in the city. I know it.
So does my father.
That’s why everything is becoming more dangerous.
The club man backs out, nearly tripping over his own feet in his hurry.
Viktor looks down at the body again. “Markov had people.”
“Not enough.”
“He had buyers.”
“Find them.”
“And the club?”
I look around the hallway. Cracked paint. Damp floor. Bad lighting. A place built for women to lose options one by one.
“Clean it or burn it,” I say. “I don’t care which.”
Viktor nods.
That should be the end of it. I should leave. I should return to the study, the contracts, the men waiting to switch loyalties, the empire that’s slowly becoming mine.
Instead, I walk toward the exit Anya used.
The back door hangs half-open, moving slightly in the cold night air. Outside, the alley is empty. Wet pavement. A dumpster. Red light leaking from the club sign around the corner. One of her heels lies near the wall, abandoned where she must have stumbled out of it.
I stare at it for too long.
It’s ridiculous. A cheap black heel that doesn’t fit her, scuffed at the toe.
Still, the sight of it does something to me.
I imagine her running through the alley with blood on her dress, one shoe gone, hair loose, terrified of the man behind her and the man who saved her.
I imagine her trying not to cry because pride is the last thing she has left.
My hand tightens around the gun.
I followed her to the club because I told myself she was a loose thread. A useful embarrassment to Dmitri. A potential weapon against my father. A girl wearing my mother’s ring. That’s what I told myself.
Standing in the alley now, I know it’s no longer enough.
Viktor appears behind me. “We found the girl’s other shoe near the street. One of the guards saw her turn east.”
“How long ago?”
“Three minutes.” He hesitates. “We should get her while she’s still in one place. She may run again now that she’s spooked.”
I anticipate as much.
“Send two men,” I say.
Viktor waits.
“Quietly,” I add.
“And then?”
I look down the alley. “Then they leave her alone.”
Viktor’s face gives nothing away, but I know him well enough to see that he’s surprised. “Understood.”
I turn back toward the club.
I will find her again.
Not tonight.
Not while she’s terrified and covered in blood.
But soon.
The city is large, but not large enough to hide what has already become mine in my head.