"You got my money?" His voice rattles like dice in a cup.
I extend the cash but don't let it go far enough to be in his reach , ensuring he remembers who's buying and who's selling.
"Information first."
He leans back and lights a cigarette despite the no-smoking sign. I suppose a small disobedience is probably the least of his sins. "What do you want to know?”
Everything. Nothing. The shape of the truth I've been chasing for ten years, which keeps shifting like desert sand under wind.
"His first wife," I say instead, my voice neutral, bored even. Just another person buying secrets in a city that sells them wholesale. "The one who died. Tell me about her."
"Svetlana?" He takes a drag , then exhales smoke that curls like question marks. "Beautiful woman. Sad eyes. The kind of sad that runs deep, you know? She was born knowing how the story ends."
Momochka.
"She had a lover," I say, a statement, not a question.
"Everyone had lovers." He shrugs. "The Pakhan kept a mistress. Svetlana kept, well, that's what you're asking about, isn't it?"
I wait. Silence is its own pressure, its own violence. I let it build until he decides it's time to stop it.
"Thomas," he says finally. "That was the man's name. American, if you can believe it. Worked for the Pakhan doing...I don't know , something with logistics. Moving things that needed moving."
That confirms my suspicions when I saw the body all those years ago. "What happened to him?" Asking questions you already know the answer to is pivotal.
"Disappeared." The informant taps ash into a coffee cup that's seen better decades. "Right around the time Svetlana died. Rumor was the Pakhan had him killed. Quiet. That kind of killing is not something worth the risk of asking about."
"How did Thomas and Svetlana meet?"
He squints at me through smoke. "Thomas was related to someone in the organization, a cousin, maybe? Hard to keep track. The Bratva's all cousins and brothers.”
My mind spins through possibilities, connections, the web of relationships I've been mapping for years. "This Thomas," I say carefully, "who was his cousin?"
"Don't know for sure." He stubs out his cigarette immediately lighting another. "But there was talk. Always talk, you understand. People saying he was connected high up. That his cousin was someone the Pakhan trusted. Someone close."
Volk.
The realization hits cold and certain. Volk with his strange American accent buried under years of Russian. Volk who was there the nightMomochkadied. Volk who never mentioned having a cousin. Who never mentioned Thomas at all.
"The Pakhan," I say, my voice sounding distant like it's traveling through water. "When he killed Svetlana, what was the reason?"
"Adultery. Betrayal. The usual." The informant waves his hand, ash drifting like gray snow. "But here's the thing, and this is just talk, understand, some people said the Pakhan was lying. Svetlana was faithful.
"Why?"
"Who knows? Maybe he just wanted an excuse. Everyone knows he wanted a son, and he’s already been married twice since then, suppose he likes to switch things up." He leans forward, his breath smelling like coffee and rot. "The Pakhan lies like other people breathe. You can't trust anything that comes out of that man's mouth."
I already knew that. But hearing it confirmed, hearing thatMomochkamight have been innocent, that Father might have manufactured the entire affair as justification, makes something crack open in my chest.
She died for nothing. For a lie. For Father's paranoia or cruelty or whatever darkness drives men to destroy the things they claim to love.
"One more thing," the informant says, sensing opportunity the way sharks sense blood. "About the daughter."
I go still. Every muscle locked. "What daughter?"
"Svetlana's kid, Yelena." He studies me too closely. "There’s a lot of rumors that she didn’t run away like the Pakhan said. But then again if she did, maybe she's still out there somewhere.”
My heart pounds against my ribs like it's trying to escape. "What happens if she is alive?”
