My gaze returned to the buyer line on the screen. Rossi. I swallowed hard. “I know that family,” I said, almost to myself. “Lucia Rossi. The only time I wasn’t homeschooled was when my father—along with armed guards he insisted I have—allowed me to go to school in Milan. That’s where I met her. I was there for two years. She was kind and gentle. She’s the kind of girl who always had ink stains on her fingers from marking up her classical literature books.” The memory tugged at places I didn’t expect. “She used to sneak pastries into class and pretend she’d bought too many on accident so no one felt embarrassed to take one. We weren’t best friends, but she was the closest thing I ever had to someone genuine in my life.”
I exhaled, dazed by how easily the past resurfaced. “Her mother hosted charity luncheons. Her father smiled too much. Like a slimy salesman who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. But Lucia never talked about any of that. She was kind and sweet, andI could tell she was a good person.” I didn’t realize I was crying until warm tears tracked down my cheeks. “She’d go quiet whenever anyone brought up where her family’s money came from. Looking at this…” I gestured to the footer on the screen, bile rising. “I refuse to believe she knew about this.” My voice cracked on the last word. “Either she’dbeen left in the dark like me or she learned how to pretend it didn’t exist. I don’t know which is worse.”
Dmitry didn’t answer. He didn’t mock me for saying it nor did he offer any comfort. He just listened, and somehow, that had more of an impact than cynicism would have.
Before I could say another word, the burner vibrated across the table. Dmitry picked up on the second ring and set it to speaker.
“Well?” my father spat out. “You have your list.”
Dmitry didn’t take his eyes off me. “Partial.”
“It’s a beginning.”
“It’s an insult.” Dmitry’s voice even.
My father’s breath scraped through the line. “You got what you asked for.”
Dmitry’s tone didn’t waver. “I asked for the buyers.”
There was a pause, one long enough that I felt the calculated hum through the line. “I want proof she’s alive and untouched.”
Dmitry didn’t gesture toward me. He didn’t need to. I cleared my throat before speaking. “I’m here,” I said, voice steady. “Alive. Untouched.”
“Good.” Relief threaded in my father’s tone, not because I still breathed but because untouched meant unspoiled. Meant marketable. “Now listen carefully, Zoya. This man?—”
“No,” I interrupted, and even I was startled by how steady the word sounded. “You listen. If you stall again, he won’t send ribbons and velvet boxes. He’ll send something big enough to bury.” The silence that followed wasn’t outrage. It was recalibration.
My father had spent my entire life crafting me into something polite and quiet. He’d never once considered that I might grow teeth.
Dmitry didn’t smile or nod, but something in his posture shifted. I wanted to believe it was his approval.
“Twenty-four more hours,” Dmitry said. “This time, you send the buyers.” My father inhaled, and for the first time since this began, fear curled beneath his anger.
“You don’t get those,” he whispered. “Those men don’t tolerate exposure. They’ll kill us both.”
Dmitry didn’t blink. “That’s not my problem.” He ended the call without ceremony.
The wind howled against the building all around us, and the laptop hummed as the data continued to scroll. My pulse slowed from frantic to deliberate. I half expected him to take me back downstairs, bolt the steel door, and make my world small and quiet again.
Instead of shutting down the laptop and ordering me to stay upstairs, Dmitry closed it with a quiet, final click and stood. “We’re done up here.”
He didn’t raise his voice or look at me to confirm I was following. He just walked toward the door with the kind of certainty that didn’t need permission.
I didn’t hesitate to follow him. The office was freezing; the concrete and steel holding on to old winter, the wind outside hissing through busted window panes like a warning.
Dmitry would never have admitted it, but keeping me up in that draft was never an actual consideration. He could pretend he didn’t care if I froze, but the choices he made already betrayed him.
He led me down the same concealed staircase as earlier, farther down past rusted meat hooks and grated drains from the slaughterhouse days. Farther still, past the cold rooms where carcasses once hung, and finally down to the reinforced bunker he had carved out beneath all of it.
Once inside, the warmth hit me. It wasn’t excessive but just enough to make my skin prickle as blood returned to places the office had numbed.
He waited until I stepped inside and the heavy door thudded shut behind us. “The buyers come tomorrow,” he said. “I need you rested. You’ll speak again, and he’ll listen differently.”
There it was. No more “leverage.” No more “asset.” No more language that reduced me to a bargaining chip. He didn’t call me important, either. Dmitry simply treated me like someone who needed her strength for what came next.
I nodded once, and it surprised me how natural that felt. Not obedient or submissive. Just aligned.
Outside these walls, war was already moving with brokers recalculating risks, soldiers shifting positions, financiers preparing exit strategies, and men who profited off other people’s daughters, deciding whether the margins still justified the blood.
