"I heard." Dmitri's voice, thick with Georgian accent and expensive vodka. "Send her up. Alone."
The guards stepped aside, predators recognizing an apex threat. I climbed stairs that shrieked under my weight, each sound calculated to announce my approach. Let him sweat. Let him remember.
The office door hung open. Dmitri sat behind a desk worth more than most people's cars, his bulk testing the leather chair's limits. Fifty-seven years old, scarred hands, liver spots marking time and excess. A survivor in a business that ate its young.
"Malyshka." Little one. His smile showed gold teeth. "I heard you were dead."
"Disappointed?"
"Curious. Gabriel's favorites usually stay buried." He poured vodka into two glasses, pushing one across mahogany. "What brings the rabbit to my warren?"
I didn't touch the drink. "Information."
"Straight to business. You were trained well." His eyes tracked over me, cataloguing. "Though you look different than most of his. Harder. What happened to your keeper?"
"He died." I stepped closer, noting how his hand drifted toward the desk drawer. "Badly."
"So I heard. Shame. He always provided reliable product." He sipped vodka, watching me over the rim. "But you didn't come here to share the news."
"February. Three weeks before he died. Gabriel came here." I circled the desk, predator math calculating angles. "What did he want?"
"Same as always. Subjects for his experiments. I told him the market was tight—"
"You're lying."
His hand moved for the drawer. I was faster, ceramic knife punching through meat and tendons to pin his palm to the desk. He screamed, vodka glass shattering on the floor.
"Let's try again," I said conversationally. "February. Gabriel. What did he want?"
"Suka blyad!" Fucking bitch. He reached with his free hand.
I caught his wrist, bending fingers back until bones creaked. "Wrong answer."
The crack of his index finger breaking made him scream again. Downstairs, gunfire erupted—Nathan's work, efficient burst patterns that made my pulse spike.
"He wanted transportation!" Dmitri gasped. "Safe passage!"
"Where?"
"I don't know!"
I broke his middle finger. "Where?"
"Fuck! Moscow! He wanted Moscow routes!"
"When?"
"Two weeks after—after he was supposed to—" His eyes went wide. "You don't know."
"Know what?"
"He's alive, little rabbit. Your master's alive."
The words hit like ice water in my veins. I twisted the knife, making him howl. "Explain."
"The death—staged! He came here, paid for new identity documents. Aleksander Volkov, no relation." He laughed, pain-drunk and desperate. "Said he was retiring. That the Institute had new management coming."
My hand found his throat. "You're lying."
