KATERINA
Waiting is its own kind of torture.
At first I tell myself I can do it. I can sit still.
I can stay where Roman left me, in the safe apartment with the curtains half-drawn and the lights too low and the clock on the wall moving so slowly it feels obscene.
I can trust that he knows what he’s doing.
I can trust Mikhail’s people, the cars, the phones, the men moving in and out of rooms with clipped voices and hard faces.
I can trust Roman. That part, at least, is not difficult anymore.
I love him.
The truth arrives quietly, almost insultingly so, after everything else it has taken to get here.
It comes now, while I’m sitting on the edge of a sofa twisting my own fingers together and thinking about my children and the man who went after them.
I love him.
I love him enough that the thought of him walking into danger without me hurts in a place deeper than fear.
I love him enough that I understand, finally, why all these years I could never really build a life over the hole he left.
I only covered it. I only kept moving and hoped no one would make me stand still long enough to notice.
Hours pass.
At least I think they do. Time has gone strange.
Sometimes the clock seems not to move at all.
Then I look up again and another forty minutes have gone by.
Mikhail takes two calls in the kitchen, both too low for me to hear, and says nothing useful after either of them.
One of Roman’s men brings coffee I don’t touch.
Another asks if I want food. I look at him until he leaves.
Finally, I stand.
I cannot do this anymore.
I walk into the bedroom because I know where Roman keeps things, or enough of them. The apartment is too carefully arranged for panic, but not too careful for use. I open the drawer in the bedside table and find what I hoped I would not find and am relieved to see anyway.
A gun. Cold, black, heavier than it looks.
I stare at it for one second, then pick it up. I’m halfway to the front door when Mikhail steps into the hall.
He looks at the gun first. Then at me. “No.”
I keep walking.
He moves in front of me. Not threatening. Just absolutely in the way. “I had clear orders,” he says.
I laugh once. It comes out thin. “And I’m supposed to care?”
“Yes.”
“Move.”
He doesn’t. “Katerina.”
“No.”
The word surprises both of us with how sharp it is.
I grip the gun harder, hating that my hand is shaking. “It’s been too long.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“It means something.” My voice breaks, and I hate that too, but I keep going because I’m too frightened now to be embarrassed. “You know it means something. If it had gone right, we would have heard by now.”
Mikhail says nothing.
That silence is answer enough.
I take one step closer. “Please.”
His face shifts then. Not much. Just enough to show that the word landed.
“He told me to keep you here,” he says.
“And if he’s bleeding out on some warehouse floor because he thought he could handle this alone?”
His jaw tightens.
I push harder because I know now that his loyalty to Roman is the only opening I have. “If something has happened to him and I’m still sitting in this apartment because you followed orders too well, are you going to live with that?”
That does it.
He looks away for half a second, then back at me.
“I hate this,” he mutters.
“So do I.”
He exhales, long and low, like a man giving in to a bad idea because the alternative feels worse. “Do you even know where you’re going?”
“No, but I’m going to figure it out,” I say, walking towards the door.
“Wait,” he says. “I saw the address on his phone.”
I turn to face him. “And what are you going to do about it?”
“Fine,” he says. “You stay behind me, you do exactly what I say, and if I tell you to get down, you get down before your body catches up to your brain.”
“Fine.”
His eyes flick to the gun in my hand. “Do you know how to use that?”
“Yes, but I haven’t used it in a while.”
“Wonderful,” he mutters.
He takes it from me, checks it with quick, practiced movements, then hands it back grip-first. “Keep your finger off the trigger unless you mean it.”
I nod once.
He grabs his coat, barks something into his phone, and within two minutes we’re in the car.
The ride there is worse than the waiting.
The city slips past in long industrial stretches, then emptier roads, then the kind of forgotten waterfront spaces where bad things can happen without anyone interrupting them out of principle.
Mikhail drives with one hand on the wheel and the other near his phone. He says very little. I don’t ask him for updates because his face tells me enough.
Nothing good.
When we finally pull up, the building looks almost dead.
A warehouse by the water, broad and low and mostly dark, with one security light buzzing near the side entrance and the wind dragging loose metal somewhere behind it.
No movement outside. No visible cars. No sign of Roman’s men, which means they’re there and hidden or gone and I do not know which possibility I hate more.
Mikhail cuts the engine and turns to me. “Stay close.”
I nod.
We get out.
The air is bitter and damp, smelling of salt, rust, and old oil.
My shoes crunch over gravel as we move toward the side of the building.
Mikhail has his gun out now. I still have mine and am trying not to look at it too often, because if I do, I will remember exactly how little I know what I’m doing.
The warehouse is mostly quiet.
Water knocks somewhere beyond the loading bay. A chain shifts in the wind. Far off, maybe from inside, something metal clatters once and then stops. But there is no shouting. No gunfire. No clear sign of a fight still happening.
That unsettles me more than noise would have.
Mikhail raises a hand, and I stop. Then I see them.
Two bodies near the corner of the warehouse, half in shadow, one on his back, one twisted against the wall as if he slid down it and never made it farther. Even from here I can tell they’re dead. The angle of the limbs, the stillness, the dark wet stain under one shoulder.
My heart starts hammering so hard I can hear it.
What happened here? Where is Roman?
Is he amongst the…
No, I can’t even think about it. He has to be alive, he has to be.
Mikhail moves ahead of me, careful now, scanning the open yard, the roofline, the windows. I follow because I cannot make myself stay behind, and every step feels louder than it should.
The dead men come clearer as we get closer. One of them looks barely older than a boy. The other has a shaved head and a knife still tucked into his belt. Neither of them is Roman.
Then a voice speaks behind me.
“Well.”
A gun presses into the middle of my back.
My whole body locks.
Mikhail turns at once, gun up, but I know from his face before I even move my eyes that he’s seeing something impossible.
I turn my head slowly.
Vika.
She’s wearing a dark coat over one of her ridiculous silk blouses, hair pinned back, mouth painted the exact shade of red she always chooses when she wants to look more dangerous than she is. Except now there is nothing performative in her smile. It’s small and cold and horribly real.
For a second, I’m too shocked to understand what I’m seeing. “Vika?”
She smiles wider. “Good,” she says. “You’re here too.”