Chapter 02
Maksim
The basement of the Kronstadt house smells like iron, motor oil, and mold.
The informant is tied to a steel chair bolted to the concrete floor.
He’s in his early thirties, wearing a dress shirt stained with sweat and the coffee he was drinking before he was captured.
The harbor police badge is still tucked in the inner pocket of his jacket, folded over one of the chairs in the corner.
The idiot’s name is Konstantin. He makes a pittance of a salary, but curiously, his bank activity over the last two months tops thirty-two thousand euros.
Yuri sent me the numbers this morning, along with a copy of the photos Konstantin took of our warehouse the last three times he was there checking the cargo.
On his phone, there was a hidden folder called urgent work.
Yuri cracked it in eleven minutes. Demidov’s name showed up in three of the messages.
Igor is standing beside me. He doesn’t roll up his shirt sleeves, like I like to do. He hates getting blood on his tattoos, so he’s almost religious about wearing long-sleeved shirts when he goes to work.
Konstantin looks up.
“Muzhchina v maske,” he says, his voice steadier than I’d expect from a guy tied to a chair at this hour of the morning. “I know who you are. I don’t know your name, but I know what you are.” He’s agitated. “I’ve worked with the police for fourteen years. I can help you.”
The mask covers my face. Konstantin isn’t talking to Maksim. He’s talking to the skull. I don’t respond.
“Can you really?” Igor asks, his voice friendly. “Tell us. We’re all ears.”
Konstantin swallows.
“I can give you names, contacts... I know who’s paying for information about you. If you let me get my phone, I’ll show you everything. I’ll help, I swear.”
“You swear.” Igor says calmly, which, I have to admit, is strange as hell coming from a man who’s six-foot-six.
“I swear.”
Igor glances at me over his shoulder. I don’t move. I stay where I am, hands behind my back, the mask covering my entire face, my posture immobile, unshakeable. I don’t need to say anything—my executor understands me.
“We’ve already seen your phone, Kostya. Minutes after you were grabbed. We know who paid you, how much they paid, and even about that ugly whore you’re paying when you don’t feel like fucking your wife at home. What we want to know isn’t anything you just offered.”
Konstantin’s face, which had been trying to hold firm, cracks in three seconds. It’s interesting to watch. His eyes lose focus, the corner of his mouth trembles, and his breathing deepens. He played his last card thinking it was a trump, only to find out it’s worth nothing.
“What do you want to know?” he murmurs.
“Who gave up the internal layout of the Kronstadt cargo in May,” Igor says. “Who gave up the Vyborg route in June. And who coordinated yesterday’s sabotage.”
“I only...”
“I’m not finished.”
Konstantin shuts up.
“Who gave it up,” Igor repeats. “Not who paid you. Who gave it up. Someone in our operation is passing information they shouldn’t be, and that name wasn’t in your messages. I want to know who it is.”
Konstantin looks at me. I don’t move.
“I don’t know the name.” He’s almost pleading.
“Yes, you do.” Igor keeps up the friendly tone. The guy is fake as hell.
“I don’t know the name. I swear on my daughter.”
“You have two daughters, Kostya.” Igor pats him on the cheek. “When you swear on one, I remember the other. When you swear on both, I remember your wife. Think a little harder. Who gave up our layout?”
Konstantin starts crying a little. Not much, but enough to make his stupidly large nose run.
“I’m tired of him,” Igor says quietly, just to me. “May I?”
“Go ahead.”
Igor unbuttons the left cuff of his shirt. He doesn’t roll up the sleeve, just loosens it to free his hands. He’s got all this fussiness about the tattoos, and I’ve never understood why—just accepted it. He crouches down and grabs the knife from the holster on his calf.
Slowly, Igor presses the tip of the blade under Konstantin’s nail, prying it loose while tearing the skin. I have to give him credit—he’s a strong man, doesn’t complain much.
Konstantin stops crying quietly and starts talking loud. He’s not screaming yet, as if his brain can’t process what Igor’s knife is doing.
“Pavel! Pavel Demidov!”
Igor doesn’t stop. He never stops when the name comes out before he asks for it, because a name given freely rarely comes complete.
“Demidov what?” Igor’s voice stays friendly, but now there’s a knife against the guy’s skin. “Demidov who? You got more names for me, Kostya? Who else?”
“Nobody! Just him, I swear… I swear, fuck…”
“I’m not convinced.”
Igor clicks his tongue, and Konstantin screams even louder.
“Yegorov,” Konstantin squeaks, his voice thin and desperate. “Dmitry Yegorov. He was the one bridging Demidov and Moscow. I never spoke to Demidov personally, I swear…”
“Keep going.”
“It was all through Yegorov! He’d tell me what I had to photograph, where, what time… the whole fucking thing!”
“How much?”
“Five thousand euros per shipment. Ten thousand for the last one.”
“Who else knew, on our side?”
“Nobody! Nobody from here, I swear. It was only Yegorov!”
Igor finally stops talking. When I look back at Konstantin, he’s still alive, but there’s a knife buried three inches below his left collarbone.
My enforcer holds the handle with the calm of someone opening a letter, letting the blood trickle slowly down the man’s shirt until it forms a stain so large it reaches his belt.
“Yegorov is the man passing information to Demidov and Moscow.” I state it in a low voice, almost inaudible under Konstantin’s whimpering.
“Da,” Igor agrees, without taking his eyes off the man in front of him. “He was already on my radar, but I didn’t have anything concrete.”
“Yuri will confirm in two hours.”
“In one.”
I nod, knowing Igor is right. Yuri will bring us everything we need to know in less than an hour. Konstantin raises his red, swollen eyes to me. A trickle of blood runs from his mouth as he forms the last words he believes might save him.
“Please.”
It won’t. Fourteen years on the harbor police, two kids, a wife, an ugly whore he pays in Vyborg on Tuesdays. Thirty-two thousand euros in the last two months to hand over our shipments to the traitor who joined up with a Moscow brigadier. Konstantin has nothing left to offer us.
“Igor,” I call. “Finish him.”
He pulls a pistol from his waistband and shoots the cop in the middle of the forehead. There’s no need to make him suffer for hours. This isn’t personal, and after all, we’re not animals.
“The boyeviks will pick him up in an hour. Want me to send the body to the usual place?”
“Send it.”
“And Yegorov?”
“Yelena. Have her track his routine this week. I want to know where he goes after work, if there’s anyone else involved, or if he has direct access to Demidov.”
Igor grabs his jacket, which he’d left on the chair in the corner, and puts it on unhurriedly. He runs his hand over his beard and looks me up and down, lingering a bit longer than normal, which usually means he wants to say something I probably won’t like.
“Speak.”
“You’re in a bad mood.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. You’re quieter than usual, and you didn’t even do your Masked Man routine.”
“What routine? I don’t do any routine.”
“Oh really…” He changes his voice in a ridiculous attempt to imitate me. It sounds nothing like me. “And when you get real close to them and say, ‘You know who I am, and you know what I do. So you better start talking.’”
“That’s ridiculous,” I grumble, because he’s right—I really do say that.
“But you’re acting strange today,” he insists.
“Igor.”
I interrupt before this turns into something bigger than it should. He shrugs and leaves, having known me long enough to know I won’t answer. I’m left alone with Konstantin’s body until I hear the stairs to the basement creak, announcing Vladimir’s arrival.
He doesn’t quicken his pace, not even when the matter is urgent. The man is a font of patience and strategy. It’s unnerving, but it’s what makes him the best at this job.
“Pakhan.”
“Vladimir.”
He stops three steps from Konstantin’s body without looking at it. Under his arm, the leather briefcase he’s carried for years already has worn corners. From inside, he takes out an envelope and holds it out to me.
“The first one.”
“That fast?” I’m surprised.
“You asked for three in ten days. I do my job right.”
I open the envelope and pull out the handful of papers. There’s a photo stapled to the upper right corner. It’s an ID, nothing special. The document is from five years ago, according to the stamp. The woman has dark hair pulled back in a bun so perfect it looks painted on.
It’s strange that I know she’s a ballerina before I even read any information. But it’s written all over her. As if dancing is part of her DNA. Straight spine, shoulders back, chin perfectly positioned, impeccable posture. She must be good at what she does.
As impressed as I am by her commanding posture, what leaves me intrigued and breathless are her eyes. Her mouth is beautiful, with full lips, but I’ve seen others like that. Her eyes, however…
“Voronova,” I read the name aloud. “Svetlana Anastasia.”
“Twenty-six years old. Single. Senior ballerina at the Bolshoi from eighteen to twenty-one. Impressive career.”
“She’s too young to have stopped already. What happened?”
“Hit-and-run. Driver fled the scene. Her right knee was destroyed, her career ended—all on some ordinary afternoon. She went back to Vysotsk to live with her parents after that. Works at a failing dance school.”
“Parents?”
“Aleksei Voronov, nearly sixty. Former electrician, alcoholic, likes to gamble, lives off odd jobs. In debt up to his eyeballs. The mother’s a civil servant, about to retire. Also drinks heavily, but doesn’t gamble like her husband.”
“To whom?” I ask, referring to Aleksei’s debts.
Vladimir pauses, searching for the information in his own folder.
“Everyone he can, basically. Loan sharking is the biggest. The line runs out of Vysotsk’s black market. Goes up to St. Petersburg. Ends in an operation tied to Demidov’s territory.”
That gets my attention.
“Directly?”
“Indirectly. Three layers or so. But it’s his line.”
I look at the photo again.
I don’t care about the destroyed leg, the indebted father, the drunk mother. Or that the debt securing me this bride connects to the man trying to bring me down. Actually, that’s a good thing. I’ll be able to take this woman out of Demidov’s reach and bring her to me without owing anyone.
I study her posture once more.
The woman in the photo isn’t asking for anything.
She’s not pleading. She’s not performing or making a pretty face for the camera.
She looks straight at the photographer with the same expression I imagine she used when facing the man who dismissed her from the Bolshoi after the hit-and-run.
Head held high, chin set. Just resignation, without submission. No weakness or whining.
She seems like someone who’s taken so many hits from life that she stopped bowing. I respect that.
I close the folder.
“She’ll do.”
Vladimir raises his chin half a centimeter, his eyes surprised.
“You didn’t even read it.”
“Don’t need to.” I extend the folder back to him. “Go get her.”
“Pakhan, you asked me for three options.”
“I did. And you brought me one that’s good enough.”
“I can present you with others in a few days,” he insists.
“Don’t need to.”
Vladimir tucks the papers back into the folder and nods silently. He never insists twice—it’s not his style. So he just does what he always does: twists his wedding ring on his ring finger.
“How long until she arrives?” I ask.
“I can go get her tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night, then,” I agree. “Tell the father the debt is being collected. Don’t mention marriage yet. Just say she’s coming with us.”
“Da.”
Vladimir turns to go up the stairs. He climbs two steps, then stops.
“Pakhan.”
“Speak.”
“Are you sure?” His gaze is no longer that of an advisor, but of the man who’s been a father figure my whole life, ever since Boris proved himself a worthless son of a bitch.
“I don’t need to be sure. I just need a wife.”
He doesn’t respond. Just gives a brief nod and continues up the steps that lead out of the dirty basement.
I open the folder again. Not to read, but to look at the photo once more.
Hair pulled back in a bun. Chin raised. Green eyes.
I touch the scar without realizing it. It takes me a second to understand what I’m doing, and another second to lower my hand.
“Fuck.”