“Those children need their routine. Their rooms. Their father.”
“I know that too.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
I don’t have an answer. So I go to bed, and I stare at the faded flower wallpaper, and I don’t sleep.
On the sixth day, I go through my father’s study. Not looking for anything specific. Just restless, moving through the house while the twins nap and my parents are out, running my hands along the spines of old files and ledgers the way I used to as a child when I wanted to feel close to a version of my father I understood. Back when Kestrel Maritime was just a name on the side of shipping containers and not the thing that sold me into marriage.
The files go back decades. Route maps. Client contracts. Correspondence with port authorities across six countries. My grandfather’s handwriting on folders from the early years was neat and slanted. My father’s handwriting taking over somewhere in the middle, broader strokes, less patience.
I pull out a folder from four years ago and flip through it. Partnership inquiries from companies I don’t recognize. Some declined. Some in negotiation. One name appears twice: Sorokin Freight. I’ve never heard of them.
I put the folder back. But the name sits with me.
That evening, I call one of my father’s former logistics managers. A man named Gennady, who worked for Kestrel Maritime for fifteen years before the company started bleeding money and the staff began leaving. He always liked me. Used to bring me chocolate from the ports when I was small.
He answers on the third ring and sounds genuinely happy to hear my voice. We talk for a few minutes about how the twins are, whether I’ve seen the city’s new waterfront development, and then I ask him, casually, if he has ever heard of Sorokin Freight.
The pause before he answers is just slightly too long.
“Where did you hear that name?” he asks.
“Old files in my father’s study. A partnership inquiry that didn’t go anywhere.”
“It didn’t go anywhere because your father had sense enough to say no.” Another pause. “Anna, that company is a front. Has been for years. They operate out of the eastern district, mostly transport contracts on the surface, but the people behind it have fingers in things your father wanted nothing to do with.”
“What kind of things?”
“The type that involves the Malikov network.”
I know that name. Everyone in this city who’s ever been adjacent to organized money knows that name. The Malikovs are one of three major Bratva factions operating in the region. They’ve been in conflict with Luca’s network for years, low-grade and ongoing, the kind of territorial tension that flares and settles and flares again.
“They approached my father four years ago?” I ask.
“Tried to. He turned them down. They didn’t love that.” Gennady’s voice drops slightly. “Why are you asking about this? Are you still mixed up in?—”
“I’m just going through old files. Clearing my head.” I keep my voice light. “Thank you, Gennady.”
I hang up and sit with it.
The next afternoon, my father gets a call from an old associate named Borin. They used to share a trade contact in Riga, back when the Baltic routes were profitable. My father takes the call in the garden, and I watch through the kitchen window without meaning to, and something about the way he’s standing makes me stay.
His shoulders drop halfway through the call. He turns away from the house. His free hand comes up and presses against the back of his neck.
When he comes inside, his face is wrong.
“Papa.”
“It’s nothing. Old business.”
“What kind of old business?”
“Anna, drop it.”
He walks past me toward the living room. I follow.
“What did Borin say?”
