Chapter 40
KATIE
By the time Pasha lays Artur’s signed territory transfer across my knees, Igor has held us for almost twenty-four hours.
Twice they gave us water, four crackers apiece, and one escorted trip to the dressing-room bathroom because Pasha wants the pregnancy intact until Artur finishes signing; near dawn, I vomited the water anyway.
After the young guard cursed at the mess, he brought another cup when Ivan reminded him that damaged leverage loses value.
Despite the pain in her shoulder, Lidia held my hair with her bound hands.
Sleep came only in stretches of minutes, and I tracked time through the air system cycling colder after midnight, the faint blue edge of dawn behind the black curtains, and the club’s old pipes knocking whenever somebody ran water on the public floor.
Hunger has sharpened the nausea into a metallic ache.
Around my swollen right wrist, the plastic has tightened, while my tongue feels furred and my bladder hurts again.
The paper is thick enough that its edge catches the raw skin. Artur’s signature fills the final line in dark ink, followed by Boris’s name and the approvals that make the southern freight district belong to men who will never understand what it purchased.
“He signed before the deadline,” Pasha says. “Your husband has become obedient.”
I look past him toward the mirror running along the private-room wall. The original chair is gone, removed after bullets broke its back, though dents mark the carpet where Artur and I hit the floor during the attack. Pasha placed me near them because he enjoys arranging humiliation with furniture.
“Artur hates being early,” I say. “You should be flattered.”
Pasha’s fingers close on the transfer. “He gave me a territory his father spent twenty years building.”
The addresses printed under the legal language make the loss real through warehouses, freight offices, and businesses whose workers will report to new men by evening.
Artur didn’t offer a promise he could reverse after the shooting.
He cut away part of the organization without knowing whether I would leave this chair alive.
Love steals what little breath hunger left me.
The contact logs and relocation car still exist; sacrifice can prove what Artur feels without deciding what I must do with it, a distinction that matters even though every part of me wants his arms around my body.
Ivan stands beside the damaged mirror in a dark suit too immaculate for the wreckage his orders created.
Misha’s ring remains on his hand. The red stone catches the private-room lights while his thumb moves across it, polishing grief into a habit so old that threat and tenderness have fused within the same gesture.
Around him, cracked glass multiplies the ring into a dozen small wounds of color.
He has dressed betrayal beautifully and still expects beauty to make it rightful.
“Pasha has his documents,” Ivan says. “Move the women below the stage.”
Pasha folds the transfer once, then leaves the pages across my knees. “They stay where my men can see them.”
Two of Ivan’s guards look at him, while Pasha’s men close half a step around the door. Nobody names the fracture, but every hand in the room shifts nearer a weapon.
“You never planned to let Pasha keep Atlanta,” I tell Ivan. “You needed him to remove Artur. Now you need him gone before his partners occupy what Artur signed away.”
One of Pasha’s guards turns his head.
Ivan’s expression barely changes. “You mistake fatigue for insight.”
Pasha gives him a thin smile. “Let her continue. Honest men enjoy hearing what their allies may be thinking.”
Neither one confirms the betrayal, which makes the guards watch each other more carefully.
“You made the same mistake with Artur,” I say. “You thought choosing me would leave him too weak to fight, but he walked out of the council before you could take his power.”
“He surrendered it.” Ivan’s voice grows quieter. “Misha died because Artur relaxed one rule for one evening. My son died in the retaliation that followed. Now three more men are dead because your name appeared on a warehouse map. Artur has mistaken repetition for devotion.”
The grief under his words alters his breathing; Ivan loved Misha. He loved his son, then carried both deaths until pain became permission to decide which family members deserved to survive.
“You keep putting people where dead men should have stood,” I say. “You put Artur in Misha’s place, me in the car, and Niko in your son’s grave. Nobody fits, so you kill another person and try again.”
His thumb stops on the ring.
Pasha laughs once. “She has known you fifty days and understands you better than your council.”
Ivan turns toward him. “You have the transfer. Complete your part.”
“My part ends when Artur arrives.”
Around the room, men shift, and now that both leaders have spoken, their clothing reveals allegiance more clearly.
Beneath his open coat, the guard nearest Pasha wears a red tie matching the Saranov men from fight night, while another has Ivan’s old crest pinned inside his lapel.
At every footstep outside, the youngest looks toward Igor and rubs the skin beside his thumbnail until it shines.
Igor frightens him.
My wrists remain tied in front, linked to the chair frame by a second plastic strip.
Lidia sits near the service wall with her hands bound the same way, watching the guard positions through pale lashes.
A staff access card hangs from the young guard’s belt and strikes the chair whenever he steps behind her.
I look at him. “Igor asked why you let Lidia keep her shoes.”
The rubbing stops. “He didn’t speak to you.”
“He spoke about you in the corridor. Said the safe-house bitch broke your mouth because you couldn’t hold her.”
The young guard touches his split lip while Lidia lowers her face before satisfaction can show.
“He also said he’d deal with you after Artur arrives,” I add.
Pasha’s guard glances toward the door. “Igor doesn’t command our men.”
“Tell him that,” the young one says.
Ivan’s guard steps between them. “Both of you shut up.”
I turn toward the red tie. “Did Ivan tell you where Pasha goes after the transfer?”
Pasha’s guard looks at Ivan before returning his attention to me. “She’s trying to divide the room.”
“Yes,” I say. “That doesn’t mean Ivan plans to let your boss leave it.”
He expected denial, and my honesty unsettles him, so he moves nearer Pasha, placing his body where he can watch Ivan’s crest pin. The young guard follows the shift with one hand near his pistol because fear has already supplied every conclusion I need.
Lidia coughs.
Her heel slides outward, touching the access card where it hangs against the guard’s thigh, and he steps away without noticing. The card swings once before settling closer to her bound fingers.
Pasha receives a message. “Artur’s vehicles entered the district.”
Ivan reaches inside his coat.
The red-tied guard draws first, aiming toward Ivan’s hand, and Ivan’s man pulls his own weapon. The young guard turns toward Igor’s expected arrival, catches his belt against Lidia’s chair, then curses when the access card tears free and drops beneath her heel.
While everyone begins speaking at once, Lidia covers the card with her shoe.
I bend over my bound hands, and although the right wrist has swollen around the plastic, blood from a scraped knuckle slicks the side of my thumb.
Years of dance taught me what the body can surrender temporarily, how a shoulder rotates farther when the ribs turn with it, how the narrowest point of a hand appears only after the thumb folds hard into the palm.
Pain shoots toward my elbow as I twist, and the plastic cuts deeper. I exhale through my teeth, reducing the resistance by fractions while Pasha shouts at Ivan to remove his hand from the coat. My thumb passes beneath the strip, skin peeling along the knuckle before the right hand pulls free.
I keep my free hand beneath the paper while Lidia drags the access card under her chair.
“The service alarm,” I whisper when she meets my eyes.
During the first attack, I saw Cherry use a staff card to open the dressing corridor.
During the reconstruction, George explained that private-room alarms reported to a panel beside the stage, and Boris made us walk every service route because Igor’s men had entered without appearing on public cameras.
The map remains clear in my head, from the narrow costume hall to the ladder hidden behind lighting storage.
Pasha pushes the signed pages inside his coat. “Take them downstairs.”
The red-tied guard reaches for me.
I snap my free hand up and drive the edge of the plastic restraint across his mouth, and he recoils with blood on his lip. Lidia kicks the young guard behind one knee, bringing him low enough for her other heel to catch his wrist.
His pistol falls.
Ivan’s guard dives toward it while Pasha’s man grabs his coat. They strike the mirror together, sending a cracked line through our reflections. Lidia snatches the access card, then turns her bound hands toward me.
From the fallen guard’s belt, I pull his knife.
As Lidia holds both wrists apart and bites her lip open again, the blade saws through her restraint.
On the final stroke, the plastic gives, and I push the knife into her hands.
With it, she cuts the band still circling my left wrist, then the second strip tethering me to the chair frame.
“Costume corridor,” I tell her.
We run.