Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Rafail
The bedroom door is cracked two inches. Enough to hear her if she stirs. She's on her back, one arm thrown over her head, hair curls spread dark across the pillow, chest rising and falling in the slow rhythm of deep sleep.
My phone buzzes. Viktor. I answer before the second pulse. "Talk."
"It's handled." His voice carries the flat efficiency I've relied on for twenty years. "Body's gone. Won't surface. Restaurant staff took the money and forgot the rest. Security footage has a convenient gap. His credit card puts him in a cab, alone, at eleven-fourteen. He simply ceased to exist."
"The owner?"
"Surprisingly grateful." A beat. "Apparently the man had a habit of cornering the waitresses. Owner called it an act of God. His words."
I don't respond. I watch the street below—empty at this hour, rain-slicked pavement catching the yellow wash of streetlights, nothing moving. Clean. Quiet. The city indifferent to what happened inside one of its restaurants last night.
"There's something else," Viktor says.
"There always is."
"Volodymyr." He lets the name sit. "He's been busy.
Our people tracked movement at the Pryvoz district—not his usual warehouse.
He's negotiating with Kutuzov's people. Mikhail Kutuzov.
" A pause, weighted this time. "He's setting up another auction, Rafail.
Using Kutuzov's facility. Whatever he's planning, it's bigger than the last one.
Different inventory. Different buyers. The kind of event that draws attention from people we don't want paying attention to us. "
Kutuzov. The name settles cold in my chest. Moscow-based, ambitious, not particularly interested in the boundaries other organizations respect. If Volodymyr is operating under his umbrella, the problem has grown considerably larger than one skimming middle-manager with delusions.
"Timeline?"
"Three weeks. Maybe four. We're still getting details."
"Keep getting them." I pause. "Nothing moves until I say so."
"Understood." Viktor doesn't argue. That alone tells me the next part of this conversation is the part he actually called for. He lets a moment pass—the way he does when he's choosing his entry point.
"You did the job yourself," he says. "In a restaurant. With witnesses, cameras, phones… Sloppy."
"The footage is gone. You just told me that."
"That's not the point and you know it." Victor’s voice doesn't rise.
But his steady tone clamors like a shout.
"You have men on payroll who exist specifically so you don't have to put your hands on someone in a restaurant.
" A beat. "You walked in there and handled it personally because you were angry.
That's not strategy, Rafail. That's emotion. "
I don't deny it. There's no argument that holds against the truth, and we both know it. The man grabbed her wrist. Left marks. I saw them, and everything became very simple, very focused, and entirely uninterested in cleaner options.
"He touched her," I say.
"Yes." Viktor's tone doesn't change. "He did."
The silence between us isn't comfortable. What’s unsaid takes up more space than the said.
"You're too deep with this girl," Viktor says finally.
"Viktor—"
"I'm not finished." He doesn't often interrupt me.
I let it stand. "This isn't like you. I've watched you run operations for fifteen years and I have never seen you make a move that wasn't three steps ahead of everyone else in the room.
Last night you were three steps behind your own anger. " He pauses. "That's new. That's her."
A beat.
"So I'm asking plainly: what happens when the contract ends?"
"That's not your concern."
"It is absolutely my concern when my pakhan is compromised."
The word is a blade finding the gap between ribs. Compromised. I could dispute it. I don't.
"She's not going anywhere," I say.
"She tell you that?"
I don't answer.
"You're not holding a gun to her head. But are you going to let her go?" Another beat. "Don't become your father."
The words drop into my chest and stay there.
"Don't." Flat. Final.
"He kept your mother for eleven years," Viktor says, as if I haven't spoken.
"Didn't love her. Wouldn't let her go. Told himself it was protection.
Told himself she was taken care of. Told himself all kinds of things while she got smaller and smaller until there was almost nothing left of who she'd been.
" His voice doesn't waver. "You were raised by your grandmother because your mother stopped being able to raise you.
Because by the time she might have left, she didn't know how anymore.
He hadn't trapped her with chains. He'd trapped her with comfort and dependency and the complete removal of any life outside of him. "
"I said don't."
He doesn't stop. "What if she’s pregnant."
The question is abrupt enough that it takes a half-second to register. Then the cold comes. "She's not," I say.
"You don't know—"
"She's not." Level. "All women processed through the auction were medically screened before placement.
Health history, bloodwork. They received a contraceptive injection as standard protocol.
Non-negotiable. Non-optional." I pause. "A pregnancy creates leverage. No man participating in that auction would have left himself vulnerable.”
He’s silent as he processes my words. "So you've already thought about it," he says.
"I think about everything."
"That's not what I mean and you know it."
I look down. The room is dark except for the desk lamp, a small yellow circle against all that shadow. Through the gap in the door: stillness, the soft sound of her breathing, the shape of her that I could map by memory at this point—the line of her shoulder, the way she curls slightly to the left.
"You don't need an excuse," Viktor says quietly.
"That's what I'm telling you. You don't need a pregnancy or a contract extension or a strategic reason.
You just need to make a decision and live with it.
" A pause. "Let her go, Rafail. She's a good girl.
She deserves a life that doesn't require her to be brave every single day just to survive it.
" His voice doesn't harden, doesn't soften.
It just carries. "Either keep her. Actually keep her—permanently, with everything that means, with her knowing the full weight of what she's agreeing to.
Or let her have a life. Those are the only two options that aren't your father. "
I don't respond.
"Everything in between," Viktor says, "is just a newer version of the same cage."
Viktor waits for my response. But I have nothing to give him. Not tonight. Not with the door cracked two inches and her breathing audible from across the room and the reality of what he's just said lodged somewhere I can't reach.
"I'll call you tomorrow," I say.
He doesn't push. "Goodnight, Rafail."
I set the phone on the desk. I don't move for a long moment. The rain has picked up outside, low against the glass. She’s not pregnant. She took that shot. I know it. Viktor knows it. The knowledge that should have made me feel reassured fills me with rage.
I tap the base of the lamp.Tap. Tap. Tap. My finger strikes it over and over when I really want to hurl it against the wall. My father never wanted his outside children. There are three of us. We were nothing but tools to keep my mother tied down.
She’s not pregnant.The thought should settle something in me. It doesn’t. It leaves a hole instead.
Through the gap in the door, she shifts. A small sound. The creak of the mattress. Then nothing.
Either keep her forever.
Or let her have a life.
I stand in the dark with Viktor's voice still in my ear. Give her a choice.
Even if I don’t get one.