Quadruplets for the Bratva

Chapter 1

MARGOT

“You going to tell me why you went pale when that blocked number lit up at seven this morning, or are we doing the thing where you pretend coffee counts as therapy?” Kimberly feeds the last stack of twenties through the bill counter and snaps a rubber band around the cash.

Burnt coffee and pine cleaner hang in the office air.

I keep my attention on the register screen. “I didn’t go pale.”

“You looked like somebody read your autopsy.”

“That’s dramatic.”

Kimberly snaps the deposit bag flat against the counter. “Maybe, but it’s also accurate.”

The register drawer sticks. I tug it harder than I mean to, and the till rattles loudly enough to turn my shoulders hard. Sudden noise still gets into me before thought does, like Grant built himself a second address under my skin and never moved out.

Kimberly doesn’t crowd me. She leans one hip against the file cabinet and waits me out while I flatten receipts and line the pens beside the keyboard in a row I don’t need.

She earned her place in my life the first week I checked in.

Grant drove through the lot twice in one afternoon.

Kimberly copied his plate, wiped my name off the desk schedule, and walked me upstairs with the big metal flashlight in one hand and a tire iron in the other.

She told me which window gave me the best view of the parking lot and moved me to that room.

“He called.” I say it to the ledger, not to her face.

“From a blocked number?” Kimberly zips the deposit bag shut.

I nod.

“Did you answer?”

“No.”

Kimberly flips the ledger page closed. “Voicemail?”

“Yes.”

Kimberly presses her mouth into a thin line and writes the night deposit total with quick, hard strokes. “What did he say?”

I look past her at the camera monitor. Five grainy boxes show nothing moving. “He laughed first.” I square a receipt under the clip. “He said I should’ve picked a better motel chain if I wanted to disappear. He said cash jobs don’t hide women like me. They just narrow the search.”

Kimberly sets down the pen. “Anything else?”

I should lie. Ugly details grow once they leave my mouth, but Kimberly knows more than anyone has for a long time.

I hear the voicemail again in my mind. It starts with ten seconds of dead air, then the low idle of a car engine and the traffic pattern from the intersection outside Mara’s old apartment, where he knows my mind still goes when I think about the night she died.

He sat there long enough to leave the sound on my phone.

His voice comes next, smooth and almost cheerful. I know you still sleep in your clothes when you’re scared.

He used to stand in the bedroom doorway after a fight and look me over if I fell asleep in jeans and a sweatshirt instead of changing. He wasn’t angry. He was patient, the way someone waits for a dog to learn a command.

I hate that I understand exactly what he meant. “He said he knows my habits.”

Kimberly swears under her breath. “Have you called your parents?”

I’ve practiced this answer enough to know every branch before it starts.

I call my mom, Julia, and she panics, which means my father, Christopher, picks up the extension, which means he tells me to come home.

Come home sounds like safety until I remember that home is thirty miles from the man who killed my sister and is stalking me.

I’d be walking back toward Grant’s zip code dressed as a family reunion.

“No.”

“Margot...”

“Mom will call every hour and Dad will drive down here with a plan that puts me back in the same county as Grant.” I straighten the pen row again because small order feels better than no control. “I’m not doing that.”

Kimberly watches me for a long moment, then lets it go. She’s smart enough to know when I won’t change my mind.

She reaches below the desk and comes up with a thick manila envelope. “I was waiting until close.”

I know what sits inside before she slides it toward me.

“Take it upstairs tonight. Don’t leave it under the desk.”

I stare at my name on the front in her blocky handwriting. “We already have a set.”

“We do.” She taps the envelope once. “Now we have two hard-copy sets and a third backup on a drive that isn’t in this building.”

“Open it.”

I slide my finger under the flap.

The first thing inside is a padded mailer with VOICEMAILS written across it in marker.

A thumb drive is inside with a folded sheet of paper wrapped around it listing original audio files, carrier downloads, time stamps, and transcripts.

Kimberly doesn’t trust screenshots alone.

She built this one redundancy at a time, so it won’t fall apart in court.

Under that rests a packet of printed transcripts from Grant’s old messages, each one labeled by date and number.

Below the transcripts are copies of his bond paperwork, witness statements, pages from the prosecutor’s file with blue-ink edits, and the injury photos I always want and never want at the same time.

I slide the top photo free before I can stop myself. Mara lies under fluorescent light with bruising around her throat and a split at her lip. The picture presents her not as my sister but as evidence. She’s a female victim, age twenty-seven. Those are the facts, but she was so much more than that.

I make myself keep looking. If I turn away too fast, some part of me starts pretending I exaggerated it.

That’s what too many people told me to do after she died.

Calm down. Think clearly. Grief makes people unreliable.

Grief made me focused. I just couldn’t get anyone to really listen, except Kimberly.

The next page in the stack is the personal effects sheet. One line lists a silver oval pendant on a fine chain, bagged with clothing.

I’m back in Mara’s kitchen for half a second, watching her fasten that necklace in the dark microwave reflection after she cut her own bangs too short. She laughed when I stared. “If I die ugly, delete every photo.”

“You won’t die ugly. You aren’t going to die at all, at least not until we’re old and gray, sharing the same nursing home.”

She’d let the pendant settle at her throat and grinned at me like the whole world was still easy. “Good. I have your guarantee, so we’re safe.”

I tuck the effects sheet under the rest of the packet before that memory can finish turning into something worse.

Kimberly doesn’t say sorry, though her eyes are sympathetic.

She plucks the thumb drive mailer from my hand and points to the folded page around it.

“I put the file list there. The original voicemail audio is on the drive, plus cleaned copies and transcripts. If your phone dies, you still have his exact words.”

“You did that on your dinner break?”

“Most of it over a couple of breaks.” She slips the mailer back into the envelope. “The rest I did after Luis left.”

Nobody in the court system paid enough attention to Mara’s murder. Nobody in my marriage built safety around me. Kimberly runs a low-budget motel off Western Avenue and is the only one who seems to care enough to help me do something, even if it’s just collecting evidence. “Thank you.”

She shrugs, but her gaze stays on me. “You’d do the same for me.”

That isn’t true, and we both know it. Arguing would cheapen the gift, so I shut the envelope and hold it against the counter.

My anger grows when I reread the blue-ink prosecutor notes. Aggressive becomes agitated. Threat history becomes relationship conflict. One margin note reads credibility concerns due to possible animus. I tap the margin note with one finger. “I want to staple this to Mabel Jimenez’s forehead.”

Kimberly huffs out a short laugh and reaches for the safe key. “Now you sound like yourself.”

“She rewrote it so he could walk.”

“She helped rewrite it.” Kimberly unlocks the drop safe, slides in the deposit bag, and shuts the heavy metal door with a solid thunk. “Grant still did the killing. The prosecutor still made choices.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“No, I’m sure it doesn’t.” Kimberly checks the back office door, tests the handle twice, and throws the bolt. “Hide that packet in your room, keep the go-bag ready, and call me if anything looks wrong.”

“Everything looks wrong. We work in a motel that’s not too picky about who checks in as long as they have cash.” Thankfully, or I wouldn’t have been able to get a room here, meet Kimberly, and find an under-the-table job.

Kimberly locks the front cash drawer and angles her head at me. “Margot?” Her voice drops a notch. “If he called this morning, something changed. Act like it changed.”

That’s good advice. Kimberly doesn’t waste time asking whether danger is real enough to justify inconvenience. She assumes trouble has arrived and wants to pay attention to it, have a plan, and be ready to go if I need to.

I slide the envelope into my tote. “I’ll hide it.”

She nods once. “You call me if one tire rolls onto this lot after one in the morning and you don’t know who it belongs to.”

“You live twenty minutes away.”

She grins. “I speed.”

I arch a brow. “That’s not reassuring. You could get a ticket and be further delayed.”

Kimberly clicks the office monitor off and back on, parking lot feed only. “Believe in me. I know what I’m doing.”

“You can’t say that and refuse context.”

“I can, and I will.” She grabs her purse, waits while I lock the supply cabinet, and walks me to the door, pausing to say, “My dad restored muscle cars. I have a few tricks up my sleeve.” She stops again to turn back to me, all hint of humor gone.

“Run first. Don’t stop to argue. Don’t stop to prove anything. ”

Mara had argued. I had argued. Women like us get trained to think the right words can drag a man back into a rational human being if we find them fast enough. We’re fools to believe it, and I no longer do. I hold her stare. “I know.”

Kimberly gives my wrist one quick squeeze and lets go.