“That’s what I thought.”
A man who wants to pull the trigger personally is a man who can be drawn out. That’s useful. I’ll need to think about how to use it.
But underneath all of it, still burning:Popov killed Lauren’s mother.
I have to keep that sealed for now. If Lauren finds out—when Lauren finds out—it can’t come in the middle of this. Not when I still need Popov, not when one wrong move unravels everything I’m trying to build.
I don’t like it. But I’ve made harder calls than this.
“What’s the last thing your man reported before he went dark?”
“That Aslanov had the perfect way to lure you out.”
My stomach drops. “Perfect way. Those were his words?”
“That’s what he said.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Elias clicks his tongue. “If I knew that, I’d tell you. I suggest you sit with it and figure it out yourself. I have to go.”
The line dies.
I set the phone down carefully, which takes more restraint than it sounds.
Blyad.
A perfect way to lure me out.
The question is whether Aslanov said it knowing he was being listened to—a deliberate message, designed to travel—or whether Elias’ man caught something genuine before he wastaken out. Both possibilities are bad. The first means Aslanov already knows more than I’ve accounted for. The second means he has something specific in mind and is moving toward it.
Either way, the clock has shortened.
I get up and move through the cramped space—two steps to the wall, turn, two steps back. I used to have an office where I could think. Marble floors, enough room to let a problem breathe. Now I’m pacing a storage room, navigating around a chair that sounds like it’s dying every time I look at it.
I run through what I have.
Timur—solid, reliable, proven. I’d trust him with my life. I have, more than once.
Popov—a loaded weapon pointed in a useful direction. Useful right up until the moment he decides it isn’t. And now, carrying a secret I can’t surface without burning the alliance before it’s served its purpose.
This is what I have. It has to be enough.
Something is coming—I can feel the shape of it pressing in at the edges, the way you feel a storm before the sky changes. Whatever Aslanov is planning, he’s already set it in motion.
I need to move faster than he expects.
The office falls quiet after I pocket my phone.
I sit with it for a moment—the Popov problem, the missing informant, the threat I can’t yet put a shape to—and then I hear it. Faint, from somewhere downstairs. The soft, rhythmic scratch of a pencil.
I find Hannah at the kitchen table, alone, bent over a sheet of paper with the concentration of someone defusing something delicate. She doesn’t look up when I come in.
I pull out the chair beside her and sit.
She holds up the paper without being asked. “It’s a cat. But the face is weird.”
I look at it. She’s right about the face—the head lists slightly to one side, the features bunched together like they’re trying to escape—but the body is confident, the tail a sweeping curve. She drew it with conviction.
