He stops. Doesn’t turn around. “He said there’s been movement. In the eastern networks. Someone putting pressure on contacts connected to Luca’s operation.”
“What kind of pressure?”
“The kind that involves identifying vulnerabilities.” He turns now and looks at me, and the shame in his face has beenreplaced by something I haven’t seen there in a long time. Fear. “He said they’ve been watching this house.”
The air in the room goes very still.
“For how long?” I ask.
“He didn’t know exactly. Weeks, maybe.”
“Who is watching it?”
He shakes his head. But he doesn’t have to say the name. I already have it.
Sorokin Freight. The Malikov network. The rival faction that’s been in low-grade conflict with Luca’s operation for years is now watching a house with no gates, no perimeter, no security, where Luca Volkov’s wife and children are sleeping.
Because of me. Because I left.
My father looks at me with those hollowed-out eyes. “Anna. What do we do?”
I look back at him, and I think about Luca’s missed calls stacking up on my phone. I think about the twins asleep upstairs. I think about Gennady’s voice going careful at the sound of a name from an old folder.
And I make a decision that I will spend a long time regretting.
“I’ll handle it,” I say.
31
LUCA
Maxim showsup at seven in the morning with coffee and the look of a man who has been rehearsing what he wants to say since before sunrise.
I’m already at my desk when he walks in. Didn’t sleep much. The estate has a particular silence at night without the twins in it, the kind you notice in your chest before you notice it with your ears, and I’ve been waking at three in the morning and lying there cataloging it.
He sets one of the cups in front of me and sits across the desk without being invited. “You look terrible.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Pavel brought something earlier.”
“That’s not an answer.” He takes the lid off his own cup. Studies me the way he’s been doing since Anna left. “Have you spoken to her?”
“No.”
“She’s still not taking your calls.”
“Correct.”
He’s quiet for a moment. Outside the window, the grounds are wet from last night’s rain, the grass dark, the garden Anna planted with the twins still neatly kept by the staff, even though no one is here to see it. Mila’s flower beds. Alexei’s section where he’d been planning the train track that would circle the entire estate.
I look away from the window.
“The twins saw me yesterday,” I say. “Anna arranged it. An hour at Viktor’s house, her parents present the entire time, her standing in the doorway with her arms crossed.” I pick up the coffee. “Mila cried when I left. Alexei asked me when they were coming home.”
“What did you tell him?” Maxim asks.
