I start to feel the nagging concern that I've made a mistake by leaving the safety of my home. Out here on the open road,we're exposed and vulnerable to attacks that could come from any direction. But Vivika needs to see this to understand that whatever lies I may have told her about other things, the women are real, and the danger they face is real, and her role in stopping it matters more than she realizes.
The bus station appears on the horizon as we crest a small hill, a squat, gray building surrounded by cracked pavement and rusting chain-link fences. It looks abandoned at first glance, just another piece of decaying Soviet infrastructure left to rot in the countryside, but I know better. This place is one of the primary collection points for the Veche trafficking operation, where women are gathered before being shipped south into Ukraine and beyond.
I pull the car off the main road and park behind a copse of trees that provides partial cover while still offering a clear view of the station. Vivika straightens in her seat and scans the building and the lot surrounding it, looking confused.
"What's this place?" she asks. Her eyes are narrowed, brow furrowed as she turns to me, and it's a relief to hear her voice again.
"Watch." I reach into the back seat and grab the binoculars I keep there for exactly this kind of reconnaissance, handing them to her. "Tell me what you see."
She raises the binoculars to her eyes and adjusts the focus, her brow furrowing as she scans the station. For a long moment she's quiet, just looking, and I watch her face as the reality of what she's witnessing begins to register.
A bus pulls into the lot as we sit there. Its windows are tinted too dark to see through, and the doors open to unload a groupof men in heavy coats who stalk like predators. They unlock a side door of the station and begin escorting women out of the building—young women, old women, some who look barely old enough to be called adults at all. They walk with their heads down and their shoulders hunched, moving in single file toward the waiting bus like cattle being herded to slaughter.
"Oh, my God," Vivika breathes, and her jaw drops. "There are… there are so many of them."
"This is just one station," I say quietly. "There are dozens like it along the route, stretching from St. Petersburg all the way down through Ukraine and Belarus and into Romania. Every day, buses like that one carry women south to be sold in markets."
She lowers the binoculars slowly, and I see her pale face and the tears collecting in her eyes. "How do you know about this?"
"Everyone in our world knows about it. The Veche family's been running this operation for decades, ever since Ana's father established the routes. It's one of their primary sources of income, and they guard it jealously."
"Then why hasn't anyone stopped them?" Fury flashes through her eyes as she swipes tears away.
"Because stopping them requires access to the routes themselves, and the Veches control every inch of that territory." I take the binoculars from her limp hands and set them aside hastily. I'm upset that I had to prove it to her in such a harsh way, and that translates to my abrupt movements. "I tried to tell you I haven't been lying."
Her head snaps toward me and anger scrawls across her face. "I don't understand. What do weapons have to do with saving these women?"
"Everything." I turn to face her fully, holding her gaze. "The Veches won't willingly give up their routes—they're too profitable, too essential to their operation. But if we can force them to let us move our weapons through those same routes, we establish a foothold. Our men start traveling that road, our resources start flowing through those channels. And once we have a foothold, we push. We widen our access, we bring in more people, we start taking control of key points along the route."
"And then?"
"And then we shut the trafficking down entirely. We take over the operation and end it, station by station, bus by bus, until there's nothing left of it but memories." I run a hand through my hair and sigh. "I don't have authority to tell you this sort of shit, but there it is." I'm tense, chest tight as I sit back and rest my head on the seat's headrest. Yuri won't like that I've told her, but she needed to hear it.
She stares at me, processing what I've told her. The anger's still buried beneath layers of shock and horror at what she's just witnessed, but I can see her starting to finally understand what's at stake.
"Why didn't you just tell me this from the start?"
"Would you have believed me? You're right. I was covering up our real motive, but it doesn't make this any less true." I shake my head slowly. "You would always have had to see this part for yourself, anyway."
She looks back toward the bus station, where the last of the women are being loaded onto the bus. The doors close and the vehicle starts to pull away, carrying its human cargo south.
"I believe you," she says quietly, and her shoulders droop. "I believe you, Lev."
Frustrated that it had to come to this, I grumble, "Good. Now we can?—"
But movement catches my eye at the edge of the station, a figure emerging from the main building and pointing directly in our direction. Even at this distance I can see the alarm in his posture, the way he reaches for something at his hip.
"Fuck," I say, my voice going hard and flat as I throw the vehicle into gear. "We gotta get out of here?—"
16
VIVIKA
The first bullet hits the back window before I even realize we're being followed, shattering the glass into a thousand pieces that spray across the back seat and catch in my hair like jagged snowflakes. I scream and duck down in my seat as Lev slams his foot on the accelerator, and the car lurches forward, throwing me against the door.
"Stay down," he barks as he yanks us around a corner so hard the tires shriek against the pavement. "Keep your head below the window and don't move."
Another shot cracks through the air and I hear it punch through the trunk somewhere behind me, the sound of tearing metal making my stomach clench with terror. I twist in my seat to look through the shattered rear window and see two cars gaining on us, black sedans with tinted windows and men leaning out the passenger sides with guns in their hands.
