25. Dominik
DOMINIK
The car behind us never hurries, and that’s the first thing that tells me it isn’t a mistake.
People who are lost usually look lost. They speed up, slow down, drift a little, brake late, then rush to pass when they see a gap.
People who know the road don’t drive like that either. They keep moving and get where they’re going.
This car does neither.
It stays the same distance behind us no matter what the road does. When traffic slows, it comes up just enough to stay with us. When the road opens, it drops back but doesn’t lose us. No sudden speeding up. No hard braking. Nothing that makes people look twice.
It isn’t trying to hide. It’s trying to look normal.
I don’t say anything to Ana yet. I don’t need to. She can see enough in the side mirror.
She keeps facing forward and keeps Mila busy in the back, reminding her to stay buckled and pointing out fields and small buildings as we pass.
Her voice changes with what she’s saying, light when she needs it, steady the rest of the time.
She gives Mila enough to keep her looking out the window instead of watching us.
Mila listens for a bit, then leans forward and asks, clear as day, if the bad man is still there.
“I’m watching,” Ana says. “You’re safe right now. Just stay buckled and keep looking outside, okay?”
I take the first turn early, before the light changes. The car follows.
The second turn comes faster, cutting across lanes just short of drawing a horn. It stays with us.
On the third change, I slow instead of pushing forward and let a delivery truck slide between us. The sedan waits. It doesn’t pass and it doesn’t drop back. When the truck turns off, the gap settles into the same space it held before.
I keep my voice steady. “They’re still behind us.”
Ana keeps her eyes forward. “How close?”
“Close enough to follow where we go,” I say. “Not close enough to try anything.”
She nods once and keeps talking to Mila like nothing changed.
We stop for the night just after dark, when the traffic gets lighter and the towns turn into a few lights and a sign you can miss if you’re not looking. The motel sits back from the highway, a plain row of rooms with numbered doors and a parking lot that’s mostly empty.
I pull in slowly and park where I can see both exits without drawing attention. The sedan that’s been behind us all afternoon stays on the road. It doesn’t turn in. It keeps going at the same steady speed and disappears around the next bend.
That’s when I know they’ve seen what they needed to see.
Ana notices before I say anything. She watches the road, then looks at me. “Is it gone?”
“For now,” I say.
Mila is half asleep in the back, her fox tucked under her chin. “Are we staying here?” she asks, her words slow and heavy.
“Yes,” Ana tells her. “Just for tonight.”
Later, after Mila is settled and breathing evenly, I lock the door. Ana looks up from the bed.
“They handed us off,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “Which means they know where we’re headed.”
“Do we change cars or plates?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “Not yet.”
She waits.
“If I change anything now, I’m telling them I’m running,” I continue. “I want them comfortable. I want them thinking they’re still watching the same thing. When I switch, it’ll be when I’m done letting them see me.”
The road into Saint Petersburg flattens and thickens at the same time.
The trees pull back. Long stretches of gray barrier and squat industrial buildings look half asleep even in daylight.
Traffic starts to layer instead of flow.
Trucks from the ports. Commuter buses with tired faces behind the glass.
The car shows how far we’ve come, with dust caked along the doors and insects dried across the windshield.
We don’t talk much as the city starts to come back in parts, bridges first, then signs, then blocks of buildings.
Mila watches it all through the window. Ana sits beside her now, close enough that Mila leans into her without thinking.
Coming back doesn’t make anything easier. This is where things get written down, checked, and remembered. This is where choices start to hold. We didn’t end up here by accident. We came here because this is where the answers are, and where people finally show their hand.
I keep my speed steady and stay in an easy lane. I don’t cut across traffic or rush yellow lights. I let the city take us in the way it takes everyone, slowly and without caring.
I don’t take us to the main address. I was never going to. The first place people expect you to go is the first place they watch. I turn east instead, toward the river, and drive into a row of garages under an old tram depot that hasn’t been used in years.
I pass the first entrance, then the second, then pull into the third, the one with the dead light over the door. I stop halfway in, kill the engine, and listen for a few seconds. No car comes in after us.
My phone buzzes once. A text from the caretaker. Key is taped under the pipe by the back stair door. Cash in the paint tin where we agreed. He adds that he’ll stay gone unless I call.
I pop the trunk and lift Mila out. Ana takes her bag, and we move through the back stairwell, past dust and old metal, then into a narrow service corridor.
I take the key from under the pipe, unlock the door I set up months ago, and lead them up three flights, out through a fire exit, and across a small courtyard where weeds crack through the concrete.
I leave the cash in the paint tin by the utility shelf on the way through.
The apartment is above an old lighting shop, and it catches them off guard the second they walk in. There’s a lot of light from the big windows. The walls are white and clean, and the place feels open. This is where we’ll stay for now.
The building across from us has no sign, and the windows are covered from the inside so they look blank from the street.
I let them look around and settle in. I help Ana put Mila’s things away, then tell them I need to step out and that I’ll be back.
I give Ana the second phone and point to the far bedroom. “Lock the door. Don’t open it for anyone but me.”
She nods.
I’m out a few minutes later. By the time I cut through an alley and get into a different car parked under a tarp two blocks away, the first car is already pulling out with another driver behind the wheel, someone who knows how to make a wrong turn look normal.
I check the mirrors when I pull away and don’t see anyone behind me. That tells me enough. They think they’re already ahead.
I keep driving. I take one slow loop around the block to read the street and see who’s hanging around.
Then I stop at an ATM that still gives cash without questions.
After that, I make a quick stop to see a man who never asks for names and keeps spare phones, fresh cards, and clean SIMs in a drawer under his counter.
I call Irina. She answers on the second ring.
She doesn’t use my name. She never has.
“Yes,” she says.
“Things shifted,” I say.
“They do.” Her voice stays even. I hear what sits under it, anyway.
“I need you,” I say. “Not for me.”
A pause, short but clear.
“For the child,” I add.
“Yes.”
She doesn’t ask who. She doesn’t ask where Ana is. She doesn’t ask anything that would slow this down.
There’s a breath on the line. Then, “Where?”
“Outside the city,” I say. “Past the pipeline road. Take the turn by the old water tower, then keep going until you reach the building on the corner. It’s old and empty enough that you won’t miss it.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“Good.”
She hangs up first.
I dial the second number.
He answers before the ring finishes.
“Dominik,” he says.
“That name stays buried,” I reply.
A short pause. “Your voice didn’t change.”
Igor Smirnov used to move Markov’s southern shipments back when Markov’s operation still looked stable from the outside.
When that stopped being true and people started dying, Igor stepped sideways and stayed alive. Now he works inside a municipal construction bureau, which means he knows which buildings are empty, which permits get rubber-stamped, and who still has pull.
“You said you were done,” he says.
“I said I wasn’t pushing,” I tell him. “That’s not the same thing.”
Silence, then the sound of paper sliding across a desk.
“They’re reopening the corridor reviews,” he says. “Infrastructure, medical supply chains, private security contracts. You’re late to get a seat.”
“That’s why I’m calling,” I say. “I don’t need the seat. I need to be seen entering the room.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“There’ll be people there who never put their names on anything,” he says. “They watch. They don’t talk.”
“I know.”
“They won’t be there for you.”
“They don’t have to be,” I reply. “They just need to see who I arrive with.”
He exhales, slow. “You’re planting yourself.”
“Yes.”
“That makes you expensive to touch,” he says.
“That’s the idea.”
The line stays silent for a moment.
“I can get you in under consulting,” Igor says finally. “Security oversight. Hospital-adjacent projects. It will look ordinary. It won’t be.”
“Send me the time and place,” I say. “Nothing traceable.”
“I’ll send it once,” he replies. “After that, you don’t use my name.”
“I won’t.”
The call ends.
I stand still for a moment after, then put the phone away.
The meeting isn’t about deals. It’s about positioning.
Once I walk into that room as Nikolai Sokolov, married, employed, documented, I stop being a problem that can be lifted off the board.
I become something that has to be managed in daylight.
Back at the apartment, Ana is sitting on the floor with Mila, her legs folded, her voice soft as she smooths Mila’s hair and whispers something meant only for her. She looks up when I come in. She doesn’t search my face for answers. She just meets my eyes and nods.
Mila gets to her feet at once. She grabs my hand with both of hers and tugs. “Come,” she says, like it’s urgent and joyful at the same time.
She pulls me down the short hall and into her room.