Lis: Then I'll still be here. Being yours isn't conditional on anything, Ptichka. It just is.
Another pause.
Then:
Ptichka: You're going to make me cry. I just woke up and you're already making me cry.
Lis: Good tears or bad tears?
Ptichka: Good, I think. I'm not used to... this. To someone not getting frustrated with me.
I thought about all the ways the world had failed her. All the people who'd called her too much, too intense, too rigid. All the rejections she carried like stones in her pockets, weighing her down with evidence that she was fundamentally unlovable.
She was wrong. She was so completely, devastatingly wrong.
Lis:Your brain works differently. That's not a flaw. It's just different. And the things you call "too much"—your intensity, your attention to detail, your need for clarity—those are the things that make you extraordinary.
Ptichka: You can't know that. You've never even met me.
Lis: I know what matters.
The conversation shifted after that, settling into our familiar rhythms. She told me about a project at work—something about provenance documentation and a painting that wasn't quite right. I told her I'd had a long night with logistics issues. Neither of us mentioned the word "Daddy" again, but it hummed underneath everything, a new frequency in our connection.
When she finally logged off to start her day, I sat in the grey morning light of my apartment and tried to remember the last time I'd felt this completely unmoored.
The intelligence work waited. Anton Belyaev waited. My brothers waited.
But for a long moment, I just sat there, reading back through our conversation, lingering on two words she'd written:
being yours
She was. Whether she fully understood it yet or not, whether we ever met face to face or remained anonymous voices in each other's darkness—she was mine.
And I was absolutely, irrevocably hers.
MybrotherNikolaihadalways been meticulous about security, but since Sophie had come into his life, he'd become almost obsessive. New encryption on the communications systems. Additional sweeps for surveillance devices. A dedicated room in the basement of the compound where no signal could enter or escape, where we could discuss family business without fear of interception.
I stood at the head of the table with my files spread before me, feeling the weight of Nikolai's attention like a physical pressure. Konstantin sat to his left, chair pushed back, boots crossed at the ankle in a deliberate display of casualness that fooled no one. Both of them were waiting for me to speak.
"Anton is coming back," I said. "And he's not coming alone."
I walked them through it systematically. The transactions I'd traced. The shell companies layered between Moscow money and legitimate purchases. The particular banks in Cyprus that only serviced one type of client. The gallery in Geneva with its convenient supply of "rediscovered" Russian masterpieces.
Nikolai's expression didn't change—it never did—but I could see the calculations running behind his grey eyes. He wasalready three moves ahead, considering contingencies, weighing options.
Konstantin was less subtle. "Moscow money," he repeated, and cracked his knuckles. "So we're not just dealing with Anton and his fucking butcher brigade anymore. We're dealing with whoever's backing him."
"Kremlin-adjacent," I confirmed. "The kind of resources that can fund a real operation, not just a desperate play."
"How long until he's operational?"
"Hard to say. The money's been moving for about three weeks that I can track. If he's building infrastructure—recruiting soldiers, establishing supply lines, finding territory—he'll need another month minimum. Maybe two."
Nikolai finally spoke. "What do you recommend?"
This was the part I'd been building toward.
"We need someone inside the art network," I said. "Someone who can verify what's legitimate and what's pipeline. Anton's using the authentication system as cover—if the paintings check out, the money looks clean. We need to know which galleries he's working with, which authenticators are compromised, which purchases are real and which are wash transactions."
