Six years she’s been tracking the Volkovskaya empire. Six years watching girls disappear and witnesses recant, and evidence vanish before trial. Six years of knowing exactly what Roman Volkov is and never being able to prove it.
“We have nothing concrete,” Zielinski says. “Shell companies. Encrypted communications. Witnesses who recant or disappear.”
“Not anymore.” Eleanor slides a second file across the table.
A wedding photo—Roman Volkov in a dark blue suit standing beside a woman in ivory silk who looks like she’s attending her own funeral. Dark hair, pale skin, mercury-grey eyes, holding something Eleanor recognizes instantly.
The look women wear when they’ve stopped choosing their own lives.
Eleanor closes the file before she remembers to breathe. Her jaw ticks once—the only crack she’d admit to.
“Anya Morozova.” She keeps her voice flat, nothing like the thing crawling up her throat. “Toxicologist. Basel doctorate. Married Roman Volkov three weeks ago.”
Zielinski studies the photo. His fingers tap once against the folder. “She looks terrified.”
Eleanor pulls up a thesis abstract on her tablet. “Her mother—Tatiana Morozova—died seven years ago. Research scientist. Found dead in her laboratory from a fentanyl overdose during self-experimentation.”
She remembers the crime scene photo. The overturned stool, the gloves still on, the pipette on the floor beside a hand already cooling. A woman who died trying to understand the thing that was killing everyone else.
“Tatiana was testing compounds on herself to develop better antidotes.” Eleanor taps the death certificate date. “Miscalculated dosing. Died from the same compound she was trying to save people from.”
The silence that follows settles into bone.
“Anya was eighteen when it happened. Found her mother’s body twelve hours post-mortem.” Eleanor’s voice stays steady even as something twists behind her ribs—the old familiar ache of understanding someone else’s worst day. “Spent the next seven years finishing what Tatiana started. Novel opioid receptor antagonists. Binding affinity studies. Anything that might save the next addict.”
Zielinski’s hand goes still on the folder.
“She created MX-42 by accident,” Eleanor says. “Synthesis intermediate that was supposed to be a precursor to the antidote.”
“Christ.”
“She tried to destroy it. But the synthesis pathway was already in her thesis. Already in the university database.” Eleanor pulls up an email chain she’s read so many times the words taste like ash. “Already accessible to anyone with chemistry knowledge and trafficking connections.”
“And now she’s married to Roman Volkov.”
Eleanor taps the marriage certificate. Same day, Anya’s fourteen-year-old brother received Belgian student visa approval for a boarding school that costs a hundred thousand euros annually. The same day, Anya signed papers that transferred her from researcher to Bratva wife. Same day, the Volkovskaya empire gained access to the chemist who accidentally created the most lethal opioid compound Eleanor has ever seen.
It’s always the brilliant ones who get eaten first.
Eleanor knows this kind of irony. The kind that eats the chemist before anyone else.
“Mikhail Morozov stays safe as long as Anya cooperates,” she says.
Zielinski pulls up satellite imagery—the Volkovskaya mansion outside Moscow. Walls high enough to keep secrets. Gates that close like jaws.
“We move now.” His voice has gone hard, the way it does before he does something reckless. “Freeze his assets. Force him underground.”
“And lose the chemist.” Eleanor meets his eyes. “She’s the only one who can tell us if there are more variants. We spook Volkov, she disappears—into a shallow grave, or somewhere we’ll never find her. We do this right, or we don’t do it at all.”
Zielinski’s jaw works, but he doesn’t argue. He’s worked with her long enough to know when she’s three moves ahead.
“Schedule the sanctions hearing,” Eleanor says. “US Senate, two weeks. We cut his funding, see if Roman Volkov bleeds when the money stops.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then we know he has other sources.” She picks up the evidence bag and the vial catches light—that winter-storm blue that means death in sixty seconds. Her grip tightens around it until the plastic edge bites into her palm. “Either way, we have toget to Anya Morozova before she finishes whatever he’s making her create.”
Her phone buzzes. The surveillance team, right on schedule.
