Nina #2
Alina says, “He confronted me after. He was livid. He thought I had gone back to Luka. He thought I had slept with him to get closer to Luka, and then kept seeing Luka anyway. He thought Luka knew about me and still brought me there like it meant nothing.”
My throat tightens. “That’s why he wanted me away from Luka,” I say.
Alina looks confused for a second.
I say, “Misha kept pushing me to resign. He kept warning me. I thought it was only because Luka was dangerous. But if he thought Luka had betrayed him with you…”
Alina wipes at her face. “He was angry at both of us. But even then, he didn’t give Luka up.”
“What does that mean?”
“He could have gone to Luka and told him everything in a way that protected himself,” Alina says. “He could have told him I was hired by Oleg, that I had passed information, that I had lied about the pregnancy. He could have handed me over.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No,” she whispers. “He gave me a chance to confess.”
My heart twists.
That sounds like Misha too.
Furious, hurt, betrayed, still trying to do the decent thing the hard way.
Alina covers her mouth for a second, but a sob gets through anyway. “I didn’t confess,” she says. “I was scared. Oleg was already threatening me. He knew about the baby by then. He told me if I went to Luka, no one would believe me, and Misha would go down with me.”
I stare at her. “What did you do?”
She looks up at me, crying openly now. “I told Oleg about Misha,” Alina says.
The room goes cold.
“What?”
“I told him Misha knew,” she says. “I told him Misha was asking questions. I told him he was trying to find out who was leaking information from Luka’s side.”
I cannot speak.
Alina’s voice breaks. “I thought I was buying time. I thought if Oleg knew Misha was suspicious, he would back off or shift the plan. I don’t know what I thought. I was terrified, and I made everything worse.”
“You gave him Misha.”
“I know,” Alina says. “I know what I did. If he’s dead, it’s because of me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I don’t know where he is,” she says. “I don’t know if he’s alive. I don’t know what they did to him after he disappeared. I’ve been sitting here for days thinking that if something happened to him, it’s because I gave Oleg his name.”
I feel sick.
I want to deny it. I want to tell her Misha is alive because Misha has always been too stubborn to die, too protective to leave me without a fight.
But I don’t know.
That is the worst part.
I don’t know anything.
“Did he bring you here?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes, this was supposed to be a safehouse, he was supposed to come back right after, but it’s been more than twenty-four hours now.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding in. My brother was here yesterday… if only I had made the choice to run away earlier.
“He thought if we came clean to Luka about everything, he would understand and forgive me for what I had done, we were just waiting for some concrete proof, and Roman was helping us with that.”
“Misha didn’t make it to Luka’s house,” I say, something cold spreading in my body.
She frowns. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I say. “I was with him.”
But if he didn’t come there, where is he now? Why haven’t we heard anything from him?
Alina wipes her face with both hands. “There’s something else.”
I look at her. “What?”
“Oleg wasn’t working blind,” she says. “He knew things he shouldn’t have known.”
“What kind of things?”
“At first, I thought he was guessing, or that he had people watching from outside. But Misha said it was more than that. He said someone close to Luka had to be feeding him information.”
“Someone inside?” I ask.
“Yes,” Alina says. “Misha was trying to find out who.”
My mind is reeling, but I know this is too much to handle on my own. I have to tell Luka everything.
I reach for my phone.
No signal. Of course.
I move toward the window, lifting it slightly.
Nothing.
I turn toward the door.
Alina looks up quickly. “Where are you going?”
“To call Luka,” I say.
Her eyes widen. “Not from here.”
“I have to tell him,” I say. “If there’s a leak near Luka, he needs to know before he keeps chasing Misha using information someone is feeding him.”
Alina stands, one hand braced on the couch. “Please. Don’t bring him here.”
“I’m not bringing him here,” I say. “I’m calling him.”
“There’s no signal in here,” she says.
“I noticed.”
I open the door.
“Nina,” she says.
I stop but don’t turn around.
Alina’s voice breaks. “If you find Misha…”
I wait.
“Tell him I’m sorry,” she says. “Please.”
I look back at her then.
She looks smaller now, not glamorous or cruel, not the woman who walked into Luka’s office and shattered my day with one sentence. Just scared. Pregnant. Guilty. Desperate.
I shut the door and face away. Shit. Shit. Shit. I’m running out of time.
The hallway outside the apartment is dim and stale, with one tube light flickering near the stairwell and the smell of old cooking oil coming from somewhere below. I check my phone again. No signal here either.
I move closer to the stairwell and lift the phone higher.
One bar appears, then disappears.
I try calling Luka anyway.
The call fails before it even rings.
I try again.
Failed.
My fingers are shaking now, and my head has started to throb at the back where I was hit. I press my free hand lightly against the wall and breathe through it.
Not now.
I cannot fall apart now.
I take the first few stairs down slowly, careful not to move too fast. At the second-floor landing, one bar appears again.
“Come on,” I say under my breath.
I call Luka again. This time it rings once.
Then the call drops.
“Damn it,” I say.
I look at the screen, trying to decide whether to keep calling or send a text. Typing feels impossible. My hands are not steady enough, and my thoughts are coming too quickly.
I open the message thread with Luka and press the microphone button for speech-to-text.
“Luka, it’s me,” I say quietly. “I’m sorry I left the house. I found Alina. She says Oleg hired her to get close to you, and Misha—”
“Nina?”
I freeze.
My thumb lifts from the screen.
The half-written message sits there, messy and unfinished.
I know that voice. I look down the stairwell.
Meredith is standing on the landing below.
For a second, I cannot make sense of her being here. She’s dressed like she just stepped out of the office, dark trousers, pale blouse, hair pinned back neatly, one hand resting on the banister. She looks calm.
Too calm.
“Meredith?” I ask.
She looks up at me with a small, tired expression. “You really shouldn’t have come here.”
My body goes cold.
I take one step back. “What are you doing here?”
Meredith says, “Trying to clean up a situation that should’ve been handled before you became curious.”
I grip my phone harder. “You?”
Meredith’s eyes flick to my phone. “Put it down, Nina.”
“No,” I say.
She sighs. “Don’t make this worse.”
A hard pressure digs into my back.
I stop breathing. The shape is unmistakable.
A gun.
A man behind me says, “Phone down.”
I don’t turn around.
Meredith watches my face, and for the first time, I see something like regret in her expression. It is small, but it is there, and somehow that makes me angrier.
“You were the leak,” I say.
Meredith says, “Give him the phone.”
My hand tightens. The gun presses harder into my spine.
The man says, “Now.”
I lower my phone slowly and the man swiftly crushes the phone under his feet. I flinch at the sound.
Meredith says, “Good.”
I stare at her. “How long?”
She does not answer.
I ask, “How long have you been feeding them information?”
Meredith says, “Walk down.”
“No,” I say.
The gun digs in again.
The man says, “Walk or you die right here.”