31. Cara
CARA
Kathryn sits on the edge of the nursery couch with her bag still packed at her feet, and I stand by the door, half angry with her for choosing this moment to throw me off and half furious with myself for not seeing how badly she was falling apart.
Her eyes are red, and I don’t know what to say. My throat feels scraped raw.
Mikhail is somewhere beyond the sitting area, busy with his games. Everyone in the north wing keeps their voices low around him. He’s been scared, and he doesn’t know enough to ask the right questions yet. Somewhere in the argument, we forgot that.
Kathryn wipes under one eye with her thumb. “Say it,” she says, her voice rough. “Say the part you keep swallowing.”
I fold my arms around myself and straighten. “I survived by staying one step ahead.”
She sits rigidly.
My eyes drop to the floor because saying it to her face feels harder.
“I stayed alert. I made myself the person in the middle of every emergency, and I did most of it alone. That included building routines and codes. I learned the neighbors, the preschool moms, the delivery times, and every person who got close to him.”
Kathryn presses her dress flat over her knees. “You learned about me.”
“I trusted you,” I say, taking one step toward her. “With Mikhail, I trusted you more than anyone.”
Her mouth twists.
I lower myself onto the mat in front of her. “I needed someone, Kath. I couldn’t trust my own family.”
My voice breaks on the last word.
Kathryn gets off the couch and kneels beside me, and when she wraps both arms around me, I fold against her.
“I made myself the person who never got to fall apart,” I say, and my voice shakes against her shoulder. “Dmitri threatens that.”
Kathryn’s mouth softens. “Because you love him.”
My laugh comes out small and awful. “Because he makes me want to lean.”
She shifts back, still holding my arms, and looks into my face. “Cara.”
“The last time I leaned into him, I woke up alone,” I say, meeting her eyes now. “I know more than I knew then. The fire killed his parents while he was in Boston with me. My head understands the past was messier and less simple than I made it.”
Kathryn waits.
“My body doesn’t,” I say, touching my stomach. “It remembers the empty bed. I was pregnant, and he wasn’t there.”
Both hands cover my face before I can stop them. “What am I supposed to do, Kath? Loving him feels dangerous. It makes me want things. It makes me less careful.”
Kathryn pulls me closer.
I inhale against her shoulder and force the rest out. “Some part of me is always waiting for the next crisis to take him away again.”
“That’s the first honest thing you’ve said all morning,” she says, squeezing me hard.
The words crack something open. I pull back before I cry again and wipe my face with both hands.
Kathryn lets go of me, but she stays close, her hand on my arm.
“I need a minute,” I say.
I stand, smooth my shirt with shaking hands, and cross the room. Kathryn’s bag scrapes the floor when I step around it. I pull the door open and step straight into Dmitri.
His hands catch my waist before I run into his chest. My palms press against his shirt. For a second, I forget what I was going to say. Patrick, Oleg, Kathryn’s bag, the guards outside the door, all of it drops out of reach.
Dmitri looks down at me. Dust marks the edge of his coat, and his shirt is open at the collar.
His hands stay on my waist, warm through my clothes, then his fingers loosen like he remembers where we are.
Neither of us speaks. My cheeks burn from the argument, and from knowing he heard enough of it.
My hands stay on him for one long second.
Then Mikhail bursts out around my legs with both hands raised. “Dmitri!” he says, delighted. “Did you win?”
Dmitri steps back and crouches at once so Mikhail doesn’t have to look up at him. “Not yet,” he says, placing one hand on his knee.
Mikhail frowns. “Why?”
Dmitri looks up at me.
The look is careful enough to hurt. He’s afraid of asking for something I may not give.
Coward.
“Because I need your mom to help me win,” Dmitri says, keeping his voice steady.
Mikhail considers that, then nods as if the plan makes sense.
Dmitri pulls the red car out of his pocket, shows it to him for one second, then puts it right back and taps the pocket once. “I kept it safe.”
I stay right there, caught on his words. He needs me. He trusts me.
Mikhail looks from Dmitri to me. “Mama helps well.”
I kneel beside him and smooth his hair back. “I’m going to help from inside the house,” I say, holding his gaze. “I’m not going anywhere, honey.”
Kathryn appears behind me, face washed and red from crying. She places one hand on Mikhail’s shoulder and says nothing.
Mikhail studies me with the serious little face that looks far too much like Dmitri’s, then gives a small nod. “Okay. Mama can help.”
Dmitri looks at Kathryn. “You need rest, movement, and some time outside this room.”
Kathryn’s mouth tightens. “That sounds easy when you say it.”
“It isn’t,” Dmitri says. “I know that.”
Mikhail leans against her leg, and Kathryn’s hand moves over his hair.
Dmitri looks from her to Mikhail. “I’ll ask Elena to arrange a nanny for the north wing. I didn’t do it earlier because I thought Mikhail might not accept anyone new.”
Kathryn gives him a tired smile. “That part still holds. A nanny can come, but I’m staying with him until he’s safe.”
Mikhail wraps one arm around her knee. “Auntie K stays.”
Dmitri gives him a short nod. “Then Auntie K stays.”
Dmitri rises, and the man who came back from the hunt returns to his face. “I need you in the secure annex,” he says, looking at me.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Oleg talked,” Dmitri says, and whatever warmth had touched his face is gone. “Patrick is alive.”
In the secure annex, Yuri has files open on the screens. Kirill sits at his station and doesn’t look up when we enter. Abramov and Dima stand near the main console with the faces of men who would rather solve the whole mess with a shovel than routes, passwords, and encryption.
Dmitri lays out what he has without wasting words.
Patrick stole from Volkov. He used Morozov’s shells to hide the money and kept Oleg inside Volkov logistics to keep the paperwork clean.
It was a trap. If Volkov grabbed too fast, Morozov could point at the mess and make Elena’s charity circle look like cover for dirty aid money.
I became collateral in case the men whose paperwork and systems Patrick used decided to collect debts.
I don’t flinch because I’m past that.
Dmitri says, “Vostok Meridian is where Morozov’s people clean up sensitive problems. Men disappear from files there. Phones get wiped. Names change. Oak and Tron guard the site.”
“Of course,” Abramov says. “Morozov’s men can’t always show their faces.”
Dmitri says, “Patrick knows enough to hurt Morozov if we reach him first.”
I grip the back of a chair. “We can’t chase him.”
Dima turns his head. “He’s already running.”
“Patrick loves that,” I say, looking at the route map. “He loves runs, chases, and being the prize everyone fights over.”
Dmitri watches the screen, his face locked in thought. He paces once across the annex, then turns back. “We need him to come out.”
Abramov folds his arms. “For what?”
“For Mikhail,” I say. “Or what Patrick thinks is Mikhail.”
Dmitri’s eyes cut to mine. “No.”
I hold up one hand. “Listen first.”
His jaw works once, but he doesn’t stop me.
“We create a fake transfer route through an old channel Patrick may trust,” I say, turning to Yuri.
Yuri leans closer. “A transfer route?”
“A desperate one,” I say. “It has to look like I panicked and tried to move Mikhail somewhere safer without telling Dmitri first.”
Dmitri’s voice drops. “Meaning?”
“Meaning we build a paper trail Patrick can smell,” I say. “It can be a rushed message, a false pickup window, or a fake handoff point. Something that looks like me making a bad choice because I’m scared.”
Abramov studies me. “You want Patrick to think you’re moving the child.”
“I want him to think I’m trying,” I say. “If he believes I broke from the Volkov plan, he’ll want control of the route before Morozov does.”
Kirill finally looks up. “That makes sense.”
Dima turns toward him. “You like this?”
“No,” Kirill says. “That’s not the same as saying it makes sense.”
I look at Yuri. “Patrick won’t trust a perfect file. It has to look human. Messy, and tired, like I made it under pressure.”
Yuri pushes his keyboard closer. “What do you need?”
I turn toward the door. “Kathryn.”
Dmitri looks at Abramov.
Abramov speaks into his phone. “Bring Miss Walsh to the annex. Mrs. Wentworth sends Anna, the nurse, to stay with Mikhail, and Sergei remains at the nursery door.”
A few minutes later, Kathryn steps in from the corridor with her arms folded, hair pulled back, and her mouth set hard enough to warn everyone in the room.
She looks at the screens, then at me. “You need Boston details.”
“No,” I say. “I need you.”
Her expression changes by a fraction.
Yuri pushes a keyboard toward her.
“What kind of details?” Kathryn looks at the map, then at me.
“The kind of behaviors I do when I panic,” I say. “The kind Patrick would notice.”
Kathryn sits and cracks her knuckles. “Cara never writes Urgent unless she wants someone to ignore it. She says Quick Favor when she’s about to ask for the moon. She double-checks times, but if she’s scared, she forgets apartment numbers and overexplains landmarks.”
I wince. “Thank you.”
Kathryn points at me without looking up. “You asked.”
Yuri opens a blank message draft. “Old phrasing she chooses?”
Kathryn types with two fingers. “Make it sound like Boston. Normal, not polished. She’d mention weather if she wanted someone to think she was calm.”
I lean over her shoulder. “Patrick needs to think I’m scared and trying to move Mikhail without telling Dmitri.”
Kathryn nods once and adds a name. “Use a woman from preschool. Someone I’d know, but not someone Patrick can check fast.”
Yuri builds the message step by step. He adds an old Boston nanny contact, a generic medical appointment, a transport request, and one old Boston detail.
The message tells the nanny contact I remember meeting her at the corner café near school, back when Kathryn and I were asking around for temporary childcare.
Yuri reads it once, then adds the technical part. The message won’t go to Patrick. It’ll go to the nanny contact, but it’ll brush an old Boston channel Patrick used to watch when he was tracking my life.
Kathryn looks at the screen. “So it looks like Cara made a mistake.”
“Yes,” I say. “He finds it because he thinks I slipped.”
Dmitri pulls a chair near Yuri and Kathryn. His hand rests flat beside the map. “Mikhail’s name stays out,” he says.
I meet his eyes. “Yes.”
“No initials,” Dmitri says. “No age, no school, no clinic, and nothing that could become real if someone gets their hands on it.”
“Agreed,” I say.
Yuri looks between us. “Then the message touches Patrick’s old Boston channel, but it doesn’t look sent to him.”
“That’s the point,” I say. “A scared mother trying to arrange a way out because she thinks the Volkovs might use her child against her.”
Dmitri shifts the chair an inch back, then pulls it forward again. He presses his tongue against the inside of his cheek before he answers. “I don’t like it.”
“Patrick comes out,” I say. “If he thinks I’m trying to move Mikhail, he’ll want control before anyone takes it from him.”
Kirill taps the wallet map. “What are we watching for?”
“Movement,” I say. “If Patrick follows the message, I want to see what he uses.”
Yuri looks up. “Wallet activity, courier login, or a message to someone he still trusts.”
“Yes,” I say. “The first thing that moves when Patrick tries to take control.”
Kirill pulls a cigarette pack from his pocket, shakes one loose, and lights it while he studies the screen. “So he checks whether you’re really moving Mikhail.”
“And while he checks, he shows us where he still feels safe,” Yuri says.
Dima’s mouth curves. “That I like.”
Dmitri doesn’t. He reaches for Kirill’s cigarette pack, pulls one halfway out, then pushes it back in.
“You’re not handling this,” he says, turning to me.
“I’m not walking into danger alone,” I say. “Patrick won’t believe it unless I’m part of it. Let him see my phrasing. Let him think Velenko scared me and Oleg made me panic.”
Dmitri pushes back from the chair. “He’ll think you’re moving our son.”
“No,” I say. “He’ll think I’m trying to.”
Kathryn looks at him. “She’s right.”
Abramov checks the draft. “We can send it through the nanny contact.”
Yuri adjusts the screen. “And Cara can make it brush the old Boston channel without sending it there directly.”
I nod. “Patrick sees it because he thinks I made a mistake.”
Yuri taps the side monitor. “If he follows it, I’ll see the access point, device trail, or relay he uses.”
Dmitri stands with his arms folded. “And if he touches it himself?”
“Then we get closer to him,” I say.
The fake message sits in front of us, thin, rushed, and human.
“He’ll believe it,” Dmitri says.
I look at the screen and see what Patrick will see. A scared sister, a hidden child, and a chance to get control before anyone else does.
“He’ll want to,” I say.