34. Damian
DAMIAN
Zoya found me in the security office a few hours after the crew had finally quit celebrating, the two of us alone with the lights turned up too bright and a whiteboard between us that still had nothing written on it.
Piston had gone home with Bear for the night, worn out from a full day of guarding Mira's lap like it was a job someone had assigned him.
The rest of the crew had scattered to their normal shifts, loud and relieved in a way that made the quiet in this room feel heavier by comparison.
"Talk to me," I said. "Tell me it's nothing."
"It's not nothing." Zoya set her laptop on the table and turned the screen so I could see it, three columns already built out of raw data, dates running down the left side like a ledger of everything that had gone wrong this year.
"I pulled every access record tied to the fire, the break-in, and the frame job.
Badge scans, visitor logs, delivery manifests, anything with a timestamp.
I wanted to know who had a real opportunity to be near all three. "
"And?"
"And it's a short list. Shorter than I want it to be.
" She didn't sit down, which told me something on its own, because Zoya sat for everything, conserved her energy just as she conserved words.
"Whoever framed Bear knew he fosters dogs out of that back office.
They knew the cot in the corner, they knew which drawer holds the spare printer templates, they knew the exact week we'd be least likely to double check the paper file because we trust that room more than any other room in this building.
That's not outside information. Nobody casing us from the street learns that.
Somebody's been inside this office, more than once, paying attention. "
I felt the old cold settle into my chest, the specific kind that had nothing to do with temperature. "How short is the list?"
"Five names, once I cross it against who also had legitimate reason to be near the warehouse before the fire and the dealership before the break-in.
" She turned back to the screen. "Two of your own crew, but both of them were photographed at a wedding in Ohio the week of the frame job, so I'm not worried about them.
That leaves three names connected to Kozlov Motor Group instead of us.
All three have moved freely through both sides of this family since the wedding.
All three would know things about this building that no outsider should. "
"Say them."
"It's Viktor's accountant, Viktor's driver, and Niko Sablin.
" She let the names sit there without editorializing, which was its own kind of mercy, because I didn't need her opinion yet.
I needed the facts clean before I let myself have a reaction to any of them.
"I'm not saying it's one of these three.
I'm saying the math says it has to be somebody with that kind of access, and right now these are the only three who fit all three incidents without a hole in the timeline. "
"Walk me through each of them."
"The accountant's been with Kozlov Motor Group longer than Viktor's had gray hair.
He handles reconciliation for every dealership, which means he's touched every set of books that ever ran through Northgate, and he was on-site at the Redford lot twice in the two weeks before the break-in, both times on legitimate business. "
"I've known that man since I was twenty-two," I said, mostly to myself.
Zoya let that sit a second before she kept going. "The driver's newer, six years, but he's the one who actually moves people and packages between both households. He had reason to be near the warehouse the week of the fire, delivering parts nobody's questioned yet because nobody thought to ask."
"And what about Niko?"
"Niko has the least physical access of the three and the most everything else.
He doesn't drive anyone anywhere and he's rarely on-site at a dealership himself.
But he's the one name that connects cleanly to the financial pattern Mira already found, the vendor code, the signature, all of it.
If this is one person acting alone, the accountant or the driver had better opportunity for the physical parts.
If it's someone directing other people to do the physical parts for him, Niko's the only one of the three with the standing to make that happen without questions. "
"That's not narrowing it. That's three different versions of the same crime."
"I know. That's why I didn't want to hand you just a name.
I wanted you to see the whole picture before you picked one to be angry at.
" Zoya closed the laptop halfway, enough to signal she'd said what she came to say.
"Whoever it is, they've been careful for a long time.
That kind of patience doesn't come from someone improvising. "
I stood and walked to the whiteboard, picked up the marker, and wrote the three names down myself because some part of me needed my own hand on it before I could believe it.
A quiet man, Viktor's accountant had balanced Kozlov's books for longer than I'd been alive.
The driver knew every back route through Corktown well enough to shave ten minutes off any drive Viktor needed to make, a fact Mira had mentioned once at two in the morning like it was nothing.
And Niko, who Mira called uncle without a hint of irony, had sat two seats down from her at every family dinner I'd ever been forced to attend.
"This isn't an outside threat anymore," I said, more to the board than to Zoya.
"It never really was. Somebody's been feeding information out of this operation for a long time, probably longer than the fire.
The fire was just the first move where they got greedy enough to leave a footprint.
" Zoya crossed her arms, studying the same three names I was studying.
"I ran phone records too. Nothing that ties directly to anyone yet, no smoking gun, just patterns.
Calls that get shorter or more frequent right before something happens. It's not proof. It's a shape."
"A shape's enough to start narrowing."
"It's enough to start narrowing carefully.
If we move wrong on this and it turns out to be nobody, we've accused a man who's been loyal to that family for fifteen years, in front of everyone who matters to him.
If we move wrong the other way and sit on it, whoever this is gets another shot at something worse than a frame job.
" She looked at me directly then, the closest thing to worry I ever saw cross her face.
"There's another problem. All three names lead back to Viktor's house, not yours.
Which means this isn't really your call to make alone. "
I knew where that sentence was going before she finished it, and some old, tired part of me wanted to argue with her anyway.
The last time I'd made a decision about protecting Mira from something dangerous, I'd done it by locking her down like a threat instead of a person, and I still hadn't fully forgiven myself for how long it took her to trust that I wouldn't do it again.
"You think I should bring her into this?"
"I think you already know the answer, and I think you're asking me so you can hear yourself say yes out loud instead of just doing it.
" Zoya almost smiled, the dry, unshockable version of it she reserved for moments when she was right and didn't need to gloat about it.
"She's the one person in this building who actually knows these three men as people instead of names on a badge log.
You can run background checks for a month and get less than she'd get in one conversation. "
I thought about the version of myself who would have made this decision without her, quietly, protectively, convinced that keeping the ugliest parts of the world away from Mira was the same thing as keeping her safe.
I knew better now, or I was trying to. Real partnership didn't mean handing her only the parts I'd already decided she could handle.
It meant handing her everything and trusting her to handle it, exactly as she'd already proven, over and over, that she could.
"I'm going to get her myself," I said. "I want her here tonight, not tomorrow."
Mira arrived within the hour, still in the clothes she'd worn all day at The Yard, tired around the eyes in a way that told me she hadn't stopped moving since the morning's chaos with Bear.
She took one look at the whiteboard before she'd even fully crossed the threshold, and I watched her read the room exactly as she read everything, fast, thorough, already three steps ahead of whatever I was about to say.
"That's not a list of suspects for the frame job," she said. "That's a list of people you think could be behind all of it."
"Exactly that."
She walked closer, close enough to read the names properly, and I watched her body go through something complicated and fast, recognition, then denial, then the particular stillness she got when she was forcing herself to keep thinking instead of feeling. "Where did these three names come from?"
"Access. Opportunity. Whoever planted the frame on Bear knew details about this building that only someone welcome in both halves of this family could know. Zoya cross-referenced it against the fire and the break-in too. These three are the only ones who fit all three without a gap."
"You're telling me someone in my father's house has been doing this the entire time. It's not Doyle. It's not some rival crew we haven't identified yet. It's someone who sits at our table."
"I'm telling you the pattern points there.
I'm not telling you which one, because I don't know yet, and because I don't want to hand you a conclusion and have you build your read of these men around it instead of forming your own.
" I'd thought about that distinction the whole drive back from her loft, how easy it would have been to just say Niko's name first and watch her reaction, and how much more honest it was to give her all three and let her tell me what she actually knew instead of what I suspected.
"You could have told me it was probably Niko. You didn't."
"I don't know that it's Niko. I know it's one of three people, and I trust you to tell me which of them, if any, is capable of something like this. Better than I could ever tell you."
Her eyes moved down the list again, slower this time, and I watched her actually consider each name instead of just reacting to the accusation itself.
"Grigor's been reconciling our books since before I was born.
He cried at my mother's funeral harder than half our actual family did.
I can't picture him lighting anything on fire, but I also couldn't have pictured any of this two months ago, so I don't know how much that's worth anymore.
" Her jaw tightened. "Sasha drives my father everywhere.
He's been with us six years now, careful and quiet the whole time.
If it's him, it's someone who's spent six years learning exactly where this family goes and when, all while deciding how much of us he wanted to burn down. "
"And what about Niko?"
"Niko is the one I don't want to say out loud.
" Her voice had gone very quiet, and for a second I saw exactly how much this was costing her to even consider.
"He taught me to play chess. He's the reason I went to law school instead of just marrying into some other family's money and calling it a career.
If it's him, I don't know what that does to every memory I have of him being the person who actually cared. "
"You don't have to decide anything tonight. I need your read, not your verdict."
She looked back at the board, and something in her face closed for a second, the particular kind of quiet I'd learned meant she was working through math too painful to say out loud yet.
I thought about Zoya's warning, about how careful we'd need to be, about how much this could cost Mira personally if the wrong name on that board turned out to be right.
I thought about nine years of learning the hard way what happened when I made choices meant to protect someone without giving them the whole truth to choose from, and I thought about how much I didn't want to become that man again, not with her, not ever.
I folded the printed sheet Zoya had built, the three names and the access records behind them, and slid it across the table until it sat in front of Mira instead of between us.
"I need you to look at this," I said, "and tell me who in your father's house you'd trust with your life."
She went very still.