"On Aleksandr?" Misha says.
"Shadow only," I say. "Staggered tails, three corners behind, with reflection and bus glass. No eye contact. If he reaches toward the parish door with a hand that knows how to pick locks, we let him show us where he learned. If he waits outside where women cross themselves, we learn who sent him the address. If he whispers the word ‘Eve' into a phone again, I want the tower and the time and the man who paid for the minutes."
"On Sergei?" Misha cracks his knuckles, and the lamplight catches the letters inked across them.
"We don't hunt him in a suit," I answer, my eyes on his hands. "We hunt the men who buy his suits. Pull donation lists for the three charities with the consultancy."
To Sasha, I say, "I want names of those who sit on two boards and visit this city more than once a quarter. The florist on Tremont knows the difference between a man who buys roses for a fight and a man who buys gardenias for a knife." Sasha nods once.
"She gets a number that bypasses every layer between her and my hand. The code word for gardenia orders is ‘frost’. Any frost on her books comes to me before water."
Misha writesfrostand underlines it. He has learned that some words do more work than a paragraph.
"The docks," I say. Misha lets the corner of his mouth lift.
"East Boston gets widened by a block. No new trucks go under canvas without a photograph of the tires and the man who signed for them."
I reach for a glass of cold water. Then I add slowly, "The longshore union man who owes me for his nephew's mess will get a message that reads like friendship and feels like obligation. We don't stop a shipment for show. We only stop lies that want to wear our logo."
He grunts assent. He enjoys his work when it is clean. He enjoys it more when it involves making a liar apologize. "My sister," I add, and he lifts a brow because I don't often name family in a room with maps.
"She pulls the core, strips the cylinder clean, reads the bitting, and maps the keyway and warding, then puts the metal back together so the door forgets she was there. She lays those cuts over the issuance book line by line, flags any twin that never should exist, and tags the clerk or steward who signed it out without a witness."
Artem, the key master, tips his chin, understanding bright in his face. "We will know if a key is gone," he says.
"We keep that dark, no notices, no memos, because silence makes the rat move, and movement makes a trail." I keep my tone even.
"We salt the street with three dummy codes, one through the steward ledger, one through a shop whisper, one through a driver text, and the first code that wakes chatter or a locksmith ping or a burner light tells us the route and the hand. Do you understand?"
"Council." Misha says, hands flat on the table like a man measuring grain. "You don't want to court them, and you don't want to provoke them. Which is it today?"
"We don't court men who use God's name like a season," I say. "We don't provoke men who vote on whether a roof stands. We answer questions with results. They want modernization. We give them a week with an empty slab, quiet dispatch, and corners that go to ground."
Misha smiles without moving his mouth. "You speak developer now," he says.
"I speakkrysha," I answer. "Everything else is signage."
He leaves to walk the orders through the bones of the house. I take the chair for one minute and let the map rest under my hands. The seat has lived in a corner of my mind for twenty years, a clean shape cut from iron and patience, something I could carry because I learned not to be afraid of burden. It looks different today. Not because I doubt the strength of my back. Because I understand the cost to the room where a woman lays a prayer book open and believes a man will not put a committee between her and God. The chair would ask me to be everywhere. Vows ask me to be here.
There is no conflict in the equation once I name it correctly. I bind to her first. If the chair comes, it comes under a roof that belongs to the two of us. If the council wants something else, they can eat at another table.
I stand and pick up the phone that looks like a museum piece and is safer than any encrypted toy the young guns like to bring me. The first number is a dock foreman who is older than my boots and still stronger than the men who mock him. The second is a sacristan who keeps a key under a stone at the parish and knows the faces who don't belong. The third is the courier dispatcher the florist uses, a neutralhub that fingerprints every bouquet before it ever hits a doorstep. I give them one sentence each and a codeword that sounds like a shipping note if anyone else is listening.
I send two more lines by hand, folded and sealed, one to an elder who still keeps a ledger with a fountain pen and will be flattered to be asked to witness a clean correction, and one to a beat cop who owes me a debt and likes to repay it with silence, not praise. No names on paper. Sergei thinks he is fishing with silk. He has never watched winter pull the rope.
At the window, the long hall holds its even squares of light. Radiators tick. The chapel lamp keeps steady below. In the glass, I catch my face and the small cross under my shirt, iron and memory under wool. No thrill. No surprise. I'm the man I am when the work is clean and the vows are speaking. I alert every loyal contact I have.
21
VALYA
The next day
Dmitri is taking me out on a date today. The word alone feels strange in my mouth, like something borrowed from someone else's life, but I don't fight it. We are both aching for a little normalcy in the middle of everything, one evening where I can pretend there is no Aleksandr, no suspicion, no dossiers with my name typed neatly on the cover. Just us, the city, and the taste of something beautiful.
He meets me outside the estate in a navy coat, nothing about him shouting soldier or sentinel. The sight of him this way, unarmed in appearance and softened by choice, unhooks something in my chest. He offers his arm as if we are any ordinary couple heading out for the night, and I take it.
The restaurant is small, tucked away on a corner that smells of bread and strong coffee. A chalkboard menu leans against the window, promising gnocchi with sage butter andpears poached in red wine. We sit near the back, where the candlelight catches in his eyes and the world feels far away.
