Chapter 28 #2
“The casino explosion changed the risk. If the man who paid me works for Ivan, silence won’t keep me alive once he decides I know too much.”
She offers no apology shaped like a request for forgiveness. The absence makes her confession uglier, perhaps more believable.
While resentment pushes against an unwanted thread of pity, I study the raw skin around her thumbnail.
For years, Lidia sold a fantasy to men who rewarded youth, novelty, and whatever face made them feel powerful for the length of a song.
Then she watched me receive in hours what she had pursued for years.
Understanding the shape of her jealousy only turns her decision to sell my home into greater cruelty.
“You could have tried to ruin me without giving a stranger my door,” I say.
“I know.”
Her answer remains quiet enough that espresso grinding behind the counter almost covers it.
“You said there was proof,” I tell her.
Lidia rubs the bitten skin beside her thumbnail. “The first messages are on an old burner phone, including a voice message from the intermediary. He says to confirm the new dancer’s upstairs address before reporting to Ivan through the east office.”
Cherry stares at her. “Where is the phone?”
“Hidden.”
Hot anger crowds the nausea from my throat. “You asked me here without bringing it?”
“If Artur searched me, I needed to have nothing he could take. If Ivan’s men followed me, I needed them to find nothing either.” Lidia presses her palms against her thighs. “The battery is removed. Nobody has touched it since the apartment attack.”
Although the voice message could connect Ivan to the address, an old phone carried into Dymov territory without preparation might disappear beneath Artur’s fury.
With Sergei’s hand still around my wrist, I watched Artur shoot him.
The bullet stopped an immediate threat, but it also ended any chance to ask who had sent Sergei or what else he knew.
By outrunning investigation, protection left a dead man and no names behind him.
Fear makes me want to hide the accusation; verification gives me a better reason to wait.
Boris would insist on an original file, payment timing, and an identifiable intermediary before accusing a senior family member.
Waiting for the phone follows that standard, although using it without telling Artur also protects me from witnessing what he might do once the standard is met.
The distinction makes my palms damp around the ginger water. I’m protecting Lidia from an unsupported accusation while also protecting myself from a test of Artur’s restraint because I don’t trust the result.
Ivan may be guilty, though Lidia may also be lying to move suspicion toward the only man with the power to challenge Artur from inside the family. An accusation without the phone could become an execution before Boris verifies a single detail.
I give her four days, with Cherry choosing a different public location after Lidia calls from another borrowed phone. Lidia protests that another meeting could expose her, but the phone is already hidden somewhere else and she has nothing to surrender now.
“If you disappear, I tell Artur everything without your evidence.”
She leaves through the emergency exit after Cherry checks the alley. I wait until the door shuts before looking at the event photograph again, tracing the space between the ringed intermediary and Ivan without touching either face.
In the picture, Ivan appears younger but no less severe, one hand resting near Misha’s shoulder as servers move behind them with champagne.
The intermediary stands outside the family grouping while his attention remains fixed on Ivan rather than the camera.
A black stone divided by red catches the flash on his hand.
Photographs can lie through framing, while loyalty can resemble proximity when an event places hundreds of employees behind one powerful man.
Lidia heard the phrase about blood years later at Misha’s memorial, but the same intermediary was already standing near Ivan before the bombing, leaving coincidence to carry more explanations than it can support.
Cherry tells me I have to trust Artur with the accusation. I want to, but Sergei died before he could give Boris a name, and I need something Boris can test before Artur faces his uncle.
Neither of us finds comfort in the decision.
I message Artur that we’re leaving, twelve minutes before we actually finish, then buy stage adhesive to make the lie physically true. By the time Cherry turns toward the safe house, the folded photograph rests beneath my blouse, warm against skin that feels too tight for my body.
Artur waits in the entry hall when I return.
He has removed his jacket, leaving a dark shirt fitted across his shoulders with both sleeves folded below the elbows. One hand rests in his trouser pocket while the other holds his phone, my messages bright across its screen.
“You arrived at eleven fourteen,” he says. “You reported leaving at twelve thirty-eight. The exterior guard watched Cherry’s car enter the road at twelve fifty.”
“Perhaps cosmetics altered time.”
“The adhesive required twelve minutes?”
He doesn’t know Lidia attended, and the uncertainty behind his questions should relieve me, yet it tightens the secret beneath my blouse until the paper seems capable of cutting skin.
“Cherry wanted privacy,” I say.
“You had it. Then you lied about when you left.”
“I gave you the check-in you requested.”
Artur crosses the hall, backing me toward the wall without touching me until cool plaster reaches my shoulders. “You gave me enough accuracy to prove the part you changed.”
His attention settles on my mouth; anger sharpens the desire already moving between us, making my breasts tighten beneath the blouse while guilt turns the response almost painful.
“Search me if you’ve forgotten the contract,” I say.
His hand closes around the side of my neck, thumb resting over the pulse that betrays me. “Do not tempt me with an invitation you don’t intend to survive.”
“That sounds less like security.”
Artur kisses me before the sentence can become another defense.
His mouth takes mine with possession stripped of patience, pressing my head against the wall while his body closes every space between us.
I grip his shirt, kissing him back despite the paper hidden between our bodies and the knowledge that each hungry movement deepens the lie.
When he lifts his head, both of us are breathing harder.
“Tell me when you’re ready,” he says.
The offer hurts more than an order would have.
Before I can answer, tires cross the gravel outside. Boris opens the door, followed by Ivan carrying a leather portfolio thick with what could be architectural plans.
Ivan looks from my swollen mouth to Artur’s hand still resting against my neck, then smiles without warmth.
“I’ve prepared security plans for the babies,” he says.
Artur’s face empties. “I never asked you to prepare them.”