My phone vibrates on the table with an incoming text from a blocked number.
Found the present I left in her backpack? I’m closer than you think, darling. Bring me something useful about Dmitri’s plans. Soon. Or the next envelope she brings home will be a summons.
The phone slips from my fingers and clatters against the table.
He was at her school. He touched her backpack. He stood close enough to photograph her face. Either him or one of his men.
Bogdan proved that he doesn’t need to touch me to get to me.
I press my palms against my mouth to trap the scream building in my throat. My daughter is asleep twenty feet away, dreaming about puddle-jumping in her new shoes, and her father is circling her like a wolf waiting for the right moment to strike.
Dmitri wants proof of my innocence. Bogdan wants me to become the traitor Dmitri already suspects I am. And somewhere between, my little girl carries threats home in her backpack without knowing.
I stare at the custody petition until the words blur.
No matter which way I turn, someone is waiting to destroy me. The only question left is who will strike first.
7
Pyotr
The sound of small feet padding down the hallway wakes me before my alarm.
I’m reaching for the knife under my pillow as I realize the footsteps are too light and uneven to be a threat. Kira. I secure and release the weapon, roll over, and push myself up against the headboard as my door creaks open.
“Pyotr?” Her voice is the kind of comical stage whisper children use when they’re trying to be quiet. “Are you awake?”
“I am now.”
She takes this as an invitation and slips through the gap. Her new shoes are conspicuously absent, replaced by fuzzy socks with dinosaurs on them. Her dark hair is sticking up in every direction.
“Mama’s in the shower.” She climbs onto my bed without asking permission. “I need someone to braid my hair for school. Mama usually does it, but she takes forever in the shower. I don’t wantto be late, because Masha is bringing cupcakes today. If I’m late, I might not get one.”
The logic is flawless in the way only a five-year-old’s can be.
“I don’t know how to braid hair,” I tell her.
“It’s easy. I’ll teach you.” She produces a hairbrush from her little pocket and deposits herself in my lap. “You do three pieces and cross them over each other. Mama showed me, but my arms aren’t long enough to reach the back of my head.”
She holds out the brush and waits.
I should tell her no. I should send her back to her room to wait for her mother. I should maintain the professional distance that’s already eroding faster than I can rebuild it.
Instead, I take the brush.
Her hair is tangled from sleep. I work through the knots as gently as I can manage with hands better suited to breaking things than fixing them. She chatters the entire time about cupcakes and Masha and whether velociraptors could beat a T. Rex in a fight.
“Velociraptors are smaller,” she explains, “but they’re really smart, and they hunt in groups. So maybe if there were like ten of them, they could win.”
“Ten seems like a lot.”
“That’s what I said! But Grisha said it would only take five.” She shakes her head and clicks her tongue. “I think he’s wrong.”
I separate her hair into three sections and try to remember if I’ve ever seen anyone braid. My mother died when I was young, and there weren’t exactly styling tutorials in the military.
“You have to cross the outside one over the middle,” Kira instructs. “Then do the other side.”
I follow her directions and fumble through the process while she patiently corrects my mistakes. The braid we end up with is lumpy and uneven, nothing like the neat plaits I’ve seen Daria create. But Kira twists to examine it in the mirror on my dresser and beams like I’ve given her a crown.
