"Fine," I forced out. "She probably just went for a walk."
The lie tasted like copper. Sophie didn't go for walks. Her bad knee made extended walking painful, and she never left the compound alone because she knew how dangerous that was, knew that the Belyaevs were still out there wanting her.
Unless she'd left precisely because she knew they wanted her.
The thought hit like ice water, but I shoved it away. No. Sophie wouldn't. She'd agreed last night to stay here, to let me and the others handle the negotiations. She'd said she trusted me. Had pressed her face into my neck and whispered I love you like it was a promise instead of goodbye.
I pulled out my phone with hands that wouldn't stay steady, pulling up the location app I'd installed on the phone I’d given her.
The app loaded with the slow inevitability of technology that knew you were desperate. Spinning circle, loading, processing, connecting to satellites or cell towers or whatever infrastructure made location services possible.
Then: a dot. Blue and bright and real, showing Sophie's location six blocks from the compound.
Relief crashed through me so intense it made my knees weak. I grabbed the counter for support, breathing too fast but for different reasons now. She left on her own. She wasn't taken. No one had breached the compound and stolen her while I slept. She'd just—gone somewhere. For reasons I didn't understand yet but could find out once I got to her.
Six blocks. Near the industrial area by the waterfront. Maybe she'd needed air after yesterday's revelations about her parentage. Learning that Konstantin Belyaev might be her biological father, that Anton was her half-brother, that her entire genetic history was a lie—that was the kind of information that could drive someone to leave at dawn, to need space and time to process without someone watching.
The rationalization felt weak even as I constructed it. Sophie processed trauma by getting smaller, not by running. When she was overwhelmed, she regressed into Little space, seeking comfort in being held and protected. She didn't leave. She came to me.
Unless she was protecting me.
The thought tried to surface again—that Sophie had left deliberately, had gone to the Belyaevs to save Mikhail, to save me from having to make the impossible choice between her and my grandfather. But that was insane. She wouldn't. She was smarter than that, knew that trading herself wouldn't actually save anyone, that Anton would just take her and keep Mikhail anyway because that's what monsters did.
I was already moving toward the door, pulling up Kostya's number on my phone. Six blocks. I could be there in minutes. Could find her and bring her home and make sure she never scared me like this again.
The blue dot on my screen stayed stationary, pulsing with each refresh. Waiting for me to find it.
Waiting for me to understand what she'd done.
The morning air burned my lungs. I ran anyway. Sprinted down the compound steps, past the guards who called after me with concern I couldn't process, onto the Brooklyn sidewalk that was empty except for delivery trucks and the occasional early commuter.
Behind me, the security detail was scrambling into vehicles. I could hear Kostya shouting orders, engines starting, but I was faster on foot. Six blocks through Brooklyn's grid pattern—I knew every street, every corner, every shortcut from years of operations. The knowledge was automatic, built into muscle memory that didn't require conscious thought.
Kent Avenue. South 4th. The industrial waterfront area where old warehouses had been converted into trendy cafes and artist studios. My dress shoes—Italian leather, expensive, completely wrong for running—hit pavement in rhythm with my racing heart. People stared as I passed. A man in a three-piece suit sprinting through Brooklyn at dawn, phone gripped in one white-knuckled hand, face probably showing every bit of the terror turning my blood to ice.
Pakhans didn't run. Didn't show vulnerability, didn't broadcast desperation, didn't do anything that suggested loss of control. But I wasn't Pakhan right now. I was just a man trying to find the woman he loved before something irreversible happened.
The blue dot on my screen was getting closer. Two blocks. One block. Right there—corner of Kent and South 4th, inside the building with Morning Grind printed on the window in cheerful yellow letters.
I burst through the door hard enough to make it slam against the wall, and every head in the coffee shop turned to stare. Maybe a dozen people scattered around small tables, laptops open, drinks steaming, living their normal Monday morning lives while mine was disintegrating into component parts.
I scanned faces with desperate precision. Blonde woman by the window—too old. Brunette at the counter—wrong build. Dark-haired woman in the corner with her back to me—but when she turned, annoyed by my dramatic entrance, she wasn't Sophie either.
Sophie wasn't here.
My heart was trying to punch through my ribs. The coffee shop was small enough that I could see every corner, every table, the bathroom door that was hanging open showing the empty single stall inside. She wasn't here. The location said she was here but she wasn't fucking here.
I pulled out my phone with hands that couldn't hold it steady, checking the app again. The blue dot pulsed on my screen, patient and certain. Ten feet away, the app claimed. Right here.
I followed the signal like someone defusing a bomb, my eyes tracking from screen to space and back, trying to reconcile what technology promised with what my eyes could see. The bathroom—empty. The corner table—occupied by a college student who was definitely not my girlfriend. The counter where people ordered—
The trash can.
Something in my chest cracked. I moved toward it on legs that didn't feel connected to my body, already knowing what I was going to find, already understanding what this meant but unable to process it until I saw the evidence.
Inside the trash can, nestled among coffee cups and wadded napkins and the detritus of strangers' morning routines—Sophie's iPhone. Screen still lit, battery at seventy-three percent, location services running.
She'd left it here deliberately. Had walked to this coffee shop, come inside, thrown her phone away, and left.
