I leave him there and get back in my car. Another item crossed off the list of loose ends that need tying. My phone buzzes.
Pakhan: Come back to the office. Now. We need to talk.
I swear to God this day is never ending. That's not good. That's the kind of summons that precedes either promotion or execution depending on which way the wind is blowing.
I drive back, park in my usual spot and take the elevator to his floor. Trying not to think about Sofiya, about what happens if he's figured it out. I can take him out, but I know I’ll never make it out of the house alive. Maybe that will be enough.
The Pakhan is sitting behind his desk when I enter, smoking a cigar despite the woman standing sideways in front of the desk, her pregnant belly on display.
His new wife— the replacement for the one he married weeks after murdering his first. She’s a beautiful woman, but I know she will just be another in a long line of discards before too long.
"Volk," the Pakhan greets. "Sit."
I sit on the overstuffed leather sofa against the right wall of the office. I keep my face neutral as I wait.
"I've been thinking about Yelena," he says. "About what you said , whether she could have survived."
"Yes?"
"And I realized something , something I should have remembered sooner." He looks at his wife. She looks back with the blank eyes of someone who's learned not to question. Not to care. He’s already broken her. "I lied that day."
The words drop like stones into still water. Ripples spreading outward. Implications I can't quite grasp.
"I don't understand," I say.
"Her mother's affair, the reason I killed her. I said Yelena wasn't my daughter, that she was his." The Pakhan's voice is flat like he's discussing the weather instead of the murder of his wife and attempted murder of her child. "I lied when I told her she wasn't mine. I wanted her to think her mother betrayed us both. But the truth is more complicated."
"What's the truth?"
"The truth is she had to have been mine." He laughs. Dark. Bitter. The sound of a man who's lost something he didn't know he valued. "There is no possible way she had Yelena with Thomas, he didn’t even work for me then. Damn Irina finally confessed too. Apparently getting diagnosed with cancer makes you want to be honest. She made up the whole affair, wanted me to fuck her in retaliation. I don't know, don't care, but Yelena is mine. My daughter. My blood."
The room spins. Everything I thought I knew shifts. Realigns.
"You killed your wife and child over a lie?" I ask.
"Apparently." He shrugs like it doesn't matter. Like murdering an innocent woman and torturing her daughter means nothing in the grand scheme of his empire. "Which makes finding the killer even more important. If Yelena’s alive—if she survived—she’s a major loose end. I don’t need her coming after Dimitri and trying to seize his inheritance.”
No. No, she's not his. She's not anything to him except a target. A threat. Another piece on his board to control or eliminate.
She's mine.The thought comes unbidden. True in ways that terrify me.
"Why tell me this?" I ask.
"Because if she's alive, I want you to find her and bring her to me. I can decide what to do with her then. If she’s pretty enough, I can sell her to someone and get a nice penny for her." His eyes bore into mine. “I can trust you to do that, right, Volk?”
Every instinct screams at me to say no. To refuse. To put a bullet in his skull right here and end this entire nightmare. But my hands are tied.
So I nod. "Yes, Pakhan. You can trust me."
The second biggest lie I've ever told.
CHAPTER 12
Sofiya
SONG: CALLING BY MOTHER SELENE
A manI finally got to tell me more about Father’s operation smells like stale cigarettes and desperation. We meet in a diner on the wrong side of town, the kind of place where the coffee tastes like burned rubber and no one makes eye contact. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting everything in sickly green. The man across from me could be forty or sixty, hard to tell when life's been that unkind.
