Ivan's face had gone from its usual emotionless mask to something I'd rarely seen—genuine concern. "I've been monitoring Morozov communications through our usual channels. Routine intelligence gathering. But this morning, something different came through."
He turned his laptop toward us, fingers flying across the trackpad to pull up files. "They sent these internally yesterday, but our source just got them to me."
The first photo filled the screen, and my blood turned to ice water in my veins.
It was me at The Strand, yesterday, the red awning visible above my head. But I wasn't alone. Eva stood beside me, laughing at something, her face turned up toward mine in perfect profile. The photo was high-quality, professional, taken from across the street with a telephoto lens. You could see the bag of books in her hand, Bear's leash wrapped around my wrist, the way her fingers were laced with mine.
"Fuck," I breathed, the word escaping before I could stop it.
"There's more," Ivan said quietly, clicking to the next image.
Smorgasburg.
Eva and I sharing ramen burgers on the bench, her legs tucked up beside her, me wiping sauce off her nose. The intimacy of the moment, captured by someone watching us, made rage build in my chest. Another click. Us walking with the ice cream, Eva pressed against my side, my arm around her shoulders. Another. Entering my building, the doorman visible, timestamp showing 8:47 PM.
"How long?" Alexei's voice had gone deadly quiet, the kind of quiet that preceded violence.
"Three days of surveillance that I can confirm," Ivan said, pulling up more data. "But based on the positions and angles, they had at least four people on Dmitry yesterday. Professional work—multiple watchers, overlapping coverage, high-end equipment."
He pulled up a map of Brooklyn and Manhattan, red dots appearing at various locations. "These are where the photos were taken from. They followed you from Queens to Manhattan to Brooklyn. This wasn't random surveillance of Volkovoperations. They were specifically tracking you, Dmitry. And the girl you’re with."
The implications crashed over me in waves. They knew where I lived. They'd seen Eva. They had her face, clear photos that would make identification easy. The safety I'd promised her, the sanctuary of my apartment—it was all compromised.
"Why?" Alexei asked, but his tone suggested he already suspected there was more to this story. "The Morozovs and us have maintained peace for two years. Uneasy peace, but peace. Why would Roman risk that by stalking my brother?"
Ivan pulled up another file, encrypted communications their source had intercepted. "They're looking for something. Or someone. The messages reference 'the asset' and 'Chenkov's loss.' They believe Dmitry has something that belongs to them."
Chenkov. Viktor Chenkov, the Morozov enforcer whose storage unit Eva had been sleeping in. The USB she'd stolen without knowing what it was. Christ, everything was connecting in the worst possible way.
"There's one more thing," Ivan said, and I wanted to tell him to stop, that I'd seen enough, but he was already pulling up the final file. "They've seen the girl's eyes. The heterochromia. There's a bounty, Dmitry. Fifty thousand for information on a woman with one blue eye, one green eye. Hundred thousand for her location. Quarter million for her delivered alive."
The conference room felt airless suddenly, the walls pressing in. Eva's distinctive eyes, the feature that made her unforgettable, had turned her into a target with a price on her head that would have every small-time criminal in New York looking for her.
Alexei stood slowly, deliberately, each movement controlled. When he turned to face me fully, it wasn't my brother looking at me anymore. It was the Pakhan, the head of the Volkov Bratva, the man who'd built an empire on blood and discipline.
"Dmitry," he said, and my name in his mouth sounded like a sentencing. "You're going to explain to me, right now, why Roman Morozov is risking war to track my enforcer. You're going to tell me who this woman is and what she has that's worth half a million dollars. And you're going to explain why I'm just learning about this now."
His eyes were cold as winter in Moscow, and I knew there was no more hiding, no more protecting Eva through secrecy.
I set my hands flat on the conference table, feeling the cool wood ground me as I prepared to break open everything I'd been protecting. My brothers waited with that particular Volkov patience that could outlast stone, and I knew there was no deflection that would work here.
"Three weeks ago, as you know, a woman stole a USB drive from Viktor Chenkov. That USB had gigabytes of data all about the Morozovs. Priceless data," I began, voice steady despite the chaos in my chest. "She didn't know what it was. She was just looking for something to fence, something to buy food with. She'd been sleeping in a storage unit. Turns out it was one of mine."
"Show me," Alexei commanded, and I pulled out my phone, accessing the secure server where I'd uploaded Eva's stolen treasure.
Ivan whistled low as the files populated his screen, his usually emotionless face showing genuine appreciation for the scope of corruption documented. "This is . . . comprehensive. They're washing nearly three million a month through police evidence lockups, seized property auctions, civil forfeiture cases. And the names—Jesus, they own half of One Police Plaza."
"The woman," Alexei said, his focus laser-sharp on what mattered. "Who is she?"
This was the hard part. The part where I had to expose Eva's vulnerability to my brothers' scrutiny.
"Her name is Eva. Twenty-two years old. She aged out of foster care four years ago with nothing—no family, no support system, no safety net. She survived on the streets through small theft, picking pockets, sleeping rough. Smart enough to stay off the radar, desperate enough to take risks like sleeping in mob storage units."
"And the eyes?" Alexei pressed. "The heterochromia?"
"One blue, one green. Impossible to miss or forget, which is why Chenkov could describe her so perfectly to his bosses. When she tried to fence the USB to one of our street contacts, thinking it was just stolen data she could sell for quick cash, word got back to me. I intervened before she could sell it to someone who'd recognize its value and either use it against the Morozovs or sell her right back to them."
"So you have the leverage and the girl," Ivan said, still scrolling through financial records. "Strategic. But why keep her? Why not just take the USB and let her disappear?"
