31. Dominik
DOMINIK
Inotice straight away that the second car is where I left it.
Ana doesn’t abandon a clean route, and she doesn’t drift from timing. If she planned to reach this car in eight minutes, she reaches it in eight. The second thing is worse.
The mirror is folded in.
We never fold it.
I stand there a second too long, staring at the angle of the glass, at the way it presses tight against the door. My breath turns loud in my own ears.
I look at the glass, pressed flat against the door. She saw it. She didn’t approach.
The next thought lands hard. Did she cut away from me? Did she decide I was the risk?
I shut it down before it grows teeth.
Ana doesn’t move without reason. If she left no sign, it’s because she assumed I was being watched. Any mark for me would have marked her too. She kept moving.
I wipe blood from my sleeve and force my breathing steady.
The building door behind me slams open. Boots hit pavement. No more thinking. I step toward the car, not to get in, but to use it. Headlights flare at the mouth of the alley and wash the brick in white. Someone blocks the street.
They expected me to come here. Good. I move along the side of the car, in a half-kneel, keeping metal between me and the first angle. A round cracks against the hood and skims off in sparks.
I fire once at the man pushing left, and he stumbles but stays upright, which tells me he’s wearing armor. I adjust my aim and send the second shot higher, above the plate, and he drops.
Two on the right shift to pinch. I step forward instead of back and close distance so their lines cross.
One fires too soon and punches brick. The other hesitates half a breath.
I use it. Two controlled shots. One folds.
The other dives behind a dumpster and speaks into his mic, voice flat, no panic.
I cut across the alley toward the narrow gap between buildings. A round grazes my upper arm and heat tears across skin. I don’t look. I move. Through the gap. Over a short fence. Into a courtyard with cracked concrete and laundry strung between windows.
A woman shouts from above when she sees me. I keep going, and when I hit the street, I don’t sprint blindly. I move fast enough to clear ground and slow enough to look like a man who knows where he’s headed.
A car takes the corner too tight and brakes when I step out. I yank the rear door open and pull the driver clear before he understands what’s happening. I slide behind the wheel and go.
I don’t take straight lines. I go right, then left, then double back through a block where cameras hang from the corners of buildings. Half of them don’t work. I know which housings are empty and which ones blink red because I’ve walked these streets before.
I keep to the blind spots and cut the headlights for half a block where the street lamps carry enough light.
My shoulder stiffens. My ribs protest when I turn the wheel. Blood slicks my palm. I wipe it on my shirt and keep driving.
I abandon the car under an overpass and move on foot. A tram rolls in. I step on as the doors close. I stand near the center pole and watch reflections in the glass instead of faces for three stops.
No one follows me when I step down and head into a public restroom near the station. I wash the worst of the blood away and wrap my arm tight with paper towels and tape from a maintenance kit.
I need a hospital. More than that, I need to know where she is. I want to know Mila is safe.
I change transport again. Then again. By the time dawn pushes gray into the sky, I’m still upright.
I take an early bus from a square that’s almost empty and sit near the back. The seats are cracked. The heater rattles. I close my eyes for three seconds.
No message from Ana. No signal that our plan worked.
The bus jolts over a seam in the road. The first confirmation comes through Gleb’s line. It isn’t a call. It’s a receipt number with a time stamp and a routing code, logged and filed.
It means someone signed for it. It means it’s inside the system now and can’t be erased.
That’s enough. The ledger isn’t contained anymore.
An hour later, Gleb sends another update. A procurement review has been moved from routine to escalated. That word doesn’t float around. It moves up the chain and lands on desks that matter.
Then the names start shifting.
Roman Kadeev drops first. By midday, his internal line doesn’t connect. His name disappears from two active oversight boards. A replacement appears in one of them before noon. The council lets him fall because he’s expendable and it buys them breathing room.
His name stays in place, but everything around him tightens. Files stop moving through his office. Access codes get updated without notice. Reviews he used to chair are postponed.
By afternoon, Mikhail Orlov goes out a window two districts away.
The report calls it stress. Health issues.
No note. I don’t believe that. His name sat too close to the custodian who signed the intake.
He held a link in the chain, and when it broke, he had nowhere to stand. Sergei Orlov doesn’t disappear.
That tells me more than if he had.
Soon after, Nikolai Petrov goes to ground. Men like him survive. They step back and wait until the noise passes.
I sit at the back of the bus and watch the city slide past the window, grey and wet, people heading to work with coffee in their hands, unaware that entire careers are being erased before lunch.
Her copy didn’t trigger alarms. It triggered action.
My jaw aches. I loosen it and don’t remember tightening it. My hand is locked around the edge of the seat. I ease my grip when my knuckles start to burn.
My phone keeps lighting up. Meetings vanish. Access changes. Men who never miss a call stop answering. The system is moving in broad daylight, and it’s pretending it always meant to.
Men are falling without being touched.
Names are being scrubbed, others frozen in place, and the ones who understand what’s happening are already calculating who they need to cut loose to stay upright.
She walked into a records office and walked out with something that shifts boards and freezes lines.
I close my eyes for a second.
I use the last clean number I trust. Irina answers on the second ring.
“Tell me,” I say.
“She’s alive,” she says. “She’s with Mila. She said if you were hurt, you wouldn’t walk through a public entrance.”
“She’s right.”
“There’s a private wing at City Clinical Seven,” Irina says. “Registered under Nikolai Sokolov. Not your old name. Everything’s filed.”
“Who knows?”
“One admitting doctor. He’s ours.”
I end the call and change transport again before heading toward the hospital.
They don’t bring me through the front. A side entrance, a corridor with pale walls that smell like disinfectant and overboiled tea.
When I turn the corner, Ana is there. Mila is asleep against her shoulder, cheek pressed into Ana’s coat, her hand fisted in the fabric.
The tin sword rests on the chair beside them.
“She made me bring it,” Ana says quietly. “She said you’d need it. To fight bad men.”
She doesn’t smile. She reaches for my wrist and grips it hard enough that I feel it through bone.
They admit me under Nikolai Sokolov. Security consultant, married, family listed. The nurse reads what’s on the form and doesn’t ask for history. Paper is enough here.
I refuse pain medication until the door closes and Ana sits beside the bed. Mila is asleep in the chair under a thin blanket. The tin sword sticks out of the bag at her feet.
“You delivered it,” I say.
“Yes.”
“More than one place.”
“Yes.”
I nod. The movement pulls at my ribs.
A trolley rolls past in the hall. Someone laughs too loudly down the hall and then remembers where they are. I look at her without distance for the first time in years.
“Are you going to run again?” I ask.
She holds my gaze.
“No,” she says. “Running bought time, that’s all.”
She studies me the way she did the first night she chose me with her eyes open.
“Are you going to keep living like every good thing has to be paid for in blood?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “Not anymore.”
The nurse comes back. “Mr. Sokolov,” she says. “Someone from administration would like a word. Just outside.”
Ana’s hand tightens around mine.
I swing my legs off the bed. My shoulder protests, and I ignore it. Mila is asleep in the narrow chair by the wall, curled on her side, her hand near the sword. She doesn’t stir.
“Who?” I ask.
“He didn’t give a name,” the nurse replies. “He said you’d understand.”
I step into the corridor. The lights are too bright for this hour. The hallway smells of disinfectant and boiled cabbage drifting from the service wing.
He’s standing near the far window. Mid-fifties. Dark suit. No overcoat, even though it’s cold outside. He isn’t on his phone. He turns when he hears my steps.
“Mr. Sokolov,” he says.
Not Dominik. He uses the name on the admission form.
“You’ve had a long night,” he continues. “There’s no need for it to stretch further.”
I don’t answer.
He studies my face once, quickly, taking in the dried blood at my collar and the stiffness in my stance.
“You’ve made your point,” he says. “The slate will be cleaned. You and your wife will be left out of what follows.”
Left out.
Not forgiven. Not excused. Removed.
Behind me, I hear the soft click of the door opening. Ana stands in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame. The man notices her. His gaze settles on her for half a second, then returns to me.
“She’s not in play,” he says plainly. “No claim stands. None will be considered.”
There it is. I hold his stare.
“And the rest?” I ask.
“That will resolve internally,” he replies.
He adjusts his cuff.
“One more thing,” he adds.
My spine tightens.
“You were found quickly.”
He lets that sit between us.
“We would rather not repeat that.”
He nods once and walks past me toward the stairwell, no escort, no hurry. I stand there a moment longer, listening to his steps fade. When I turn back toward the room, Ana is watching me.
“They know,” she says.
“Yes,” I answer.
The corridor feels smaller now. The ledger moved the room. But the council is still standing.