32. Yaromir
YAROMIR
By nightfall, my dining room has become a war room.
Maps cover the table. Not the kind men use in offices, clean and printed and useless. These are marked by hand with routes, buildings, guards, entrances, blind spots, names of men who owe me and men who still pretend they owe my father.
The old Volkov house is circled in red.
Dmitri’s apartment is circled twice.
My father’s warehouse near the rail yard has three lines drawn through it.
Viktor stands across from me, sleeves rolled up, phone in one hand, jaw tight. Alexei is near the window, quieter than usual. That is how I know he understands what this is becoming.
“Kirill has forty men at the main house,” Viktor says. “Maybe more by midnight. If he knows you’re coming, he’ll move Dmitri before you get there.”
“Then we hit both locations.”
“That splits us.”
“I know.”
“It weakens us.”
“It gives Dmitri fewer places to hide.”
Viktor looks at me for a long second. “It also gets men killed.”
I look up from the map. “Men die.”
“Yours too.”
“If they’re afraid, they can leave.”
“No one is afraid,” he says sharply. “That’s not the point.”
I straighten.
The room goes still.
Viktor has argued with me before. Quietly. Carefully. Never like this.
Good. At least one man here is still thinking.
“Then make your point,” I say.
He puts both hands on the table and leans forward. “You are reacting.”
“I’m acting.”
“No, you are taking every man we have and throwing them at the Volkovs before we know where Anya is.”
My hand closes around the edge of the table. The wood creaks.
Alexei shifts slightly near the window but doesn’t speak.
Viktor continues, because he has always been braver than is healthy. “We found blood. We found her ring. We don’t have a body. We don’t have Dmitri. We don’t know if Kirill has her, if Dmitri has her, or if someone else picked her up after the canal.”
“Dmitri shot her.”
“We don’t know that.”
I look at him.
He doesn’t back down.
“We know there was blood near the water,” he says. “We know Dmitri staged the photo. We know there was a car. That’s not enough to burn the entire old house tonight.”
“It’s enough for me.”
“That’s the problem.”
Several men look down.
Viktor lowers his voice. “Anya wouldn’t want you like this.”
“You’ve no idea what my wife would want,” I say.
But it doesn’t matter. She’s gone. My men are still searching the river, but I know what they will find. No one can survive that kind of injury and be still missing. It’s been over twelve hours.
“You think I’m going to get myself killed,” I say.
“I think you’re going to get yourself killed and take half our men with you before you find the one person you’re trying to save.”
My anger is so cold now it almost feels clean.
“You forget who you’re speaking to.”
“No,” Viktor says. “I’m the only one here who remembers.”
Silence.
Then the door opens. Two of my men enter with Sergei Sokolov between them.
He looks worse than the last time I saw him. His coat is wrinkled, his hair disheveled, face gray with fear. There’s a bruise near his cheekbone and dried blood at the corner of his mouth.
Not enough. Not nearly enough.
The second he sees me, he starts talking. “I didn’t know. I swear to God, I didn’t know.”
I move toward him. He stumbles back, but my men hold him in place.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
I hit him. Not hard enough to break anything. Hard enough that his head snaps to the side and he nearly collapses.
“Yaromir,” Viktor says.
I ignore him.
Sergei coughs, eyes watering. “I don’t know.”
“You contacted her.”
“No. I didn’t. Dmitri took my phone.”
“When?”
“This morning. I went to meet him because he said he had an offer.”
“You went to Dmitri.”
“He said he could help me leave the city. I didn’t think he would go after Anya. I thought he wanted leverage against you. Money. Maybe safe passage.”
“You gave him her weakness.”
“I didn’t know he’d call her.”
“You knew she would come if she thought you were in danger.”
Sergei says nothing. That’s answer enough.
Something in me goes very still. For this weak, selfish, sweating creature who sold her once and nearly delivered her into death the second time through cowardice alone.
“You told him she still cared,” I say.
Sergei’s mouth opens. No words come.
I step closer. “Didn’t you?”
His voice breaks. “He asked if she would answer. I said maybe. I didn’t think?—”
I grab him by the throat and slam him back against the wall.
Men move behind me, but no one stops me.
Sergei claws at my wrist, eyes bulging.
“You didn’t think,” I say quietly. “That’s the only honest thing you have said.”
Viktor is suddenly beside me. “Yaromir. He may know more.”
I keep my hand on Sergei’s throat another second.
Then I release him.
He drops to his knees, coughing hard, one hand at his neck.
I don’t actually expect him to have any of my answers.
Sergei flinches. “I don’t know. I swear. Dmitri took my phone and had one of them drive me around for hours. Then they left me near the old market. I came back and your men found me.”
He’s shaking now, curled on the floor, no longer the father who dragged Anya to my house and called it a proposition. Just another small man crushed under debts he created and loyalties he never had.
I look at my men. “Take him downstairs.”
Sergei looks up quickly. “Wait. Please. Is she alive?”
The room stills.
For one second, I see Anya in his face.
Not much. Just enough to make me hate him more.
“You don’t get to ask that,” I say.
They drag him out.
The door closes.
My decision settles before the door opens again.
This time no one announces Larisa. She walks in wearing black, cane in hand, as if she has arrived for dinner instead of war. Her gaze moves over the table, the maps, the weapons, the ring beside my gun.
Then she looks at me. “Well,” she says. “It seems you are finally ready to act.”
The room goes quieter.
I don’t move from the table. “I thought your men were following her.”
Larisa sighs, as if I’m being difficult. “I thought you had it handled.”
My jaw tightens. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the truth.” She steps farther into the room. “My man followed her to the warehouse. He saw her go in. He saw Dmitri there.”
“And then?”
“He left.”
Viktor’s eyes lift to me.
I stare at her. “He left.”
Larisa’s expression remains calm. “When he realized it was a clandestine affair, yes.”
The words land exactly as she intends.
Several men in the room go still.
Alexei mutters, “Careful.”
Larisa ignores him. “My men are discreet,” she continues. “They don’t stand outside doors listening to lovers quarrel unless instructed to.”
I know what she’s doing. Every word is chosen to cut. Every pause, every look at the ring, every mention of Dmitri is meant to feed the thing Dmitri wanted me to believe.
That Anya went willingly. That she chose him.
That I have been made a fool by the woman I put in my bed. And yet, despite that, I don’t hold a grudge against her. There’s nothing I want more than her safety, for her to be okay, to hear her say my name just once.
I love her.
The realization leaves me breathless.
I look at Larisa. “You are trying to provoke me.”
“I’m trying to make you see clearly.”
“No. You’re trying to make me angry at her.”
Larisa’s mouth tightens. “Poor girl,” she says, and there’s nothing kind in her voice. “She thought she was going to meet her love. But his ego won, didn’t it? At what cost?”
The room turns cold.
I hear one of the men shift behind me.
Viktor watches my face carefully.
Larisa wants the rage, but this time I don’t give it to her.
“You should go to your room and take some rest,” I say. “It’s been a long day.”
Her eyes narrow. “You don’t want my help?”
“No,” I say. “You’ve done enough for her.”
Her eyes flash with something. “I’m the only person in this world that cares for you,” she says. “You may try to convince yourself otherwise, but it remains the truth.”
“Rest. Pray. Drink. Do whatever old women do when they are no longer useful in the room.”
A few of my men go very still.
Larisa’s mouth tightens. “You forget who you’re speaking to.”
“No,” I say. “I remember exactly who I’m speaking to. That is why I’m asking politely.”
For a moment, she looks like she might argue. Then her gaze drops to the map, to Anya’s ring beside my gun, and something coldly satisfied enters her face. “You will need me before this is over.”
“Then I’ll send for you.”
She turns her cane once under her palm. “Don’t hesitate tonight.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
She leaves without another word. The door closes behind her.
Viktor looks at me from across the table. “This is where you either listen to me or get yourself killed.”
“I’m listening.”
“No. You are standing very still and pretending that’s the same thing. I know you still intend to go through it.”
Alexei, near the window, mutters, “He has a point.”
I look at him. “Then save your breath.”
He raises both hands. “A small point. Tiny. Almost decorative.”
“So,” I say, sliding the ring into my pocket, “we stop pretending this is still a family disagreement.”
Alexei steps closer to the table. “How far?”
“All the way.”
The room changes. Not dramatically. These men are not boys. They have seen bodies, betrayals, fires, empty chairs at breakfast. Still, they understand what I mean.
We are going to take the old Volkov kingdom apart with our hands.
Viktor’s face hardens. “Then we do it properly.”
“Good.”
He exhales once, sharp and controlled, then bends over the map. “Kirill will expect you to hit the house first.”
“Yes.”
“So we don’t.”
“No,” I say. “I need them to feel all the doors closing on them before we move in. But we still need to plan what happens afterwards.”
Viktor points at the map. “Kirill’s house has three public entrances. Main gate, west service gate, and the south garden access. The garden access has been closed for years, but that doesn’t mean it’s useless.”
“Men?”
“Between thirty and forty inside. More if he has called in the old guard. We have confirmed twenty-two by name.”
“Dmitri?”
“Not seen leaving since afternoon.”
“Cars?”