Need an ID on this man. Connected to Daria Kozlov. Priority.
His response comes within minutes.
On it. Give me a few hours.
I set down the phone and fall back against the couch.
Daria is hiding something bigger than laundered money or suspicious phone calls. Someone has their hooks in her, and that someone was bold enough to grab her in broad daylight.
The pieces are forming a picture, but it’s not clear enough to understand what’s going on quite yet.
One thing I know for certain, though, is that the man wasn’t nobody.
And I will find out who he is.
8
Daria
The man at the grocery store was Semyon Baranov.
I recognized him the second I saw him. Bogdan’s right-hand man. He used to stand outside our bedroom door while my husband taught me lessons about obedience. He drove me to the hospital after Bogdan broke my wrist and coached me on what to tell the doctors.
I knew Bogdan was watching me, but seeing Semyon was a message from my ex-husband that he can reach me whenever he wants, no matter how carefully I’ve built my walls.
I’m wide awake while Kira sleeps peacefully down the hall. Pyotr has been here for eight days, and during that time, my world has started crumbling around me.
My mind races through the escape options I’ve memorized over the years. The train station. The bus depot. The ferry to Helsinki, if I can get us passports. I have a bag packed in the back of my closet with enough spare change to at least get us out of the city,plus clothes for Kira and documents that might pass a cursory inspection.
But where would we go?
Bogdan found me in St. Petersburg not long after we arrived. He’d find me anywhere else I ran.
And now, there’s the added complication of Pyotr.
He’d report my disappearance to Dmitri. My cousin will assume I fled because I’m guilty, and every resource the Kozlov family has will turn toward hunting me down. I’d be running from Bogdan with the Moscow Bratva at my heels.
I roll onto my side and pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders. The apartment is quiet except for the occasional creak of the old building settling. Somewhere down the hall, I hear Pyotr moving around. Probably checking windows and securing the perimeter.
He does that at least three times every night. I’ve counted.
The man who grabbed Semyon’s wrist today didn’t hesitate. He crossed the grocery store like a missile locked on its target, and the look on his face when he squeezed Semyon’s arm was something I’ll never forget. Pure, cold menace. The promise of violence held in check by the thinnest thread of control.
Semyon ran. Bogdan’s enforcer, the man who once made me beg for mercy on my knees, ran from Pyotr Fedorov without a backward glance. When I think about him stepping between Semyon and me, my heart rate kicks up.
What would it be like to have someone stand between me and the threat? Someone strong enough to make even Bogdan’s people run?
I shake off the thought. Pyotr isn’t my protector; he’s my jailer. The fact that he bought my daughter shoes and helped me out once or twice doesn’t change his purpose here.
Later that evening, I make dinner while Kira sets the table with the mismatched plates we’ve collected over the years. She’s been chattering nonstop about a game she played at school, something involving tag and rules so complicated I can’t follow them.
“And then Grisha said that wasn’t fair because velociraptors can’t fly, but I said some dinosaurs could fly, so maybe these ones learned how.” She places a fork exactly as I taught her before she adds, “Pyotr, do you think dinosaurs could learn to fly?”
He looks up from the newspaper he’s been pretending to read. “Some dinosaurs did fly. They were called pterosaurs.”
“See? I told Grisha!” Kira beams at him like he’s confirmed the most important scientific discovery of the century. “You’re really smart, Pyotr.”
“I read a lot.”
