My hands started shaking.
They'd been watching me. For months. Since before the auction.
I kept reading. Couldn't stop now even though my stomach was churning.
Phone transcript from June 3rd:
ANTON BELYAEV: "The Volkov girl is the key. She carries everything her father knew in that head of hers."
UNKNOWN: "Can we extract it?"
ANTON: "We'll have to. The old man kept everything in his memory—routes, contacts, weaknesses. She inherited it all."
June 18th email:
"Debt sold to The Settling. Auction scheduled for August. This is our window. If we don't acquire the asset, someone else will."
August 2nd text message, the day before the auction:
"Contingency plan approved. If we lose the bidding, we take her by force. Pakhan's orders."
I finished the second box at noon. Started the third immediately even though my knee was aching from sitting still and my stomach was empty.
July. August. The most recent communications.
They got more desperate. More violent. References to "the Volkov asset" appearing in nearly every other document. Plans for the auction attack laid out in clinical detail. Anton Belyaev personally authorizing the murder of Yevgeny Sidorov if necessary to acquire me.
A memo dated August 10th, three days before the auction:
"Priority One: Acquire Sophie Volkov. Her photographic memory contains critical intelligence on West Coast operations, including routes, contacts, and vulnerabilities in all five New York families. Her father spent twenty-five years working for Western bratva. She knows everything. We need her alive and cooperative. If cooperation fails, we have chemical extraction options."
Chemical extraction. They'd planned to drug information out of me if I wouldn't talk voluntarily.
My vision tunneled. The documents blurred. I gripped the edge of the desk, felt the solid oak under my palms, tried to ground myself in something physical and real.
They'd been hunting me since my father died. Tracking my movements. Planning my capture. The auction had just beentheir first attempt. When Nikolai outbid them, they'd escalated to violence.
All for what my father had put in my head without asking. All for information I couldn't forget even if I wanted to.
"Find something?"
I jerked up. Nikolai stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame with that casual grace that should have looked practiced but didn't. He wore jeans and a grey henley today, sleeves pushed up his forearms. Comfortable. Domestic.
But his eyes were sharp. Analytical. Missing nothing about my white knuckles gripping the desk or my too-fast breathing or the way I'd gone rigid at his voice.
"They've been looking for me." My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. "For months. This wasn't opportunistic. They planned this."
Saying it out loud made it real. Made my chest tight and my hands shake worse.
Nikolai pushed off the doorframe. Crossed the library in a few long strides. I should have felt trapped as he approached—should have felt the danger in a predator closing distance.
Instead I felt relief. Which was wrong. Backwards. Completely fucked up.
But there it was anyway. Relief that I wasn't alone with this information. Relief that someone else would help me understand it. Relief that Nikolai Besharov was here and solid and real.
He stopped beside my chair. Close enough to touch but not touching. "I thought so. Show me."
I pulled up the documents I'd flagged. Lined them up on the desk in chronological order. My hands were steadier now that he was here. That should have terrified me.
