He picks up on the first ring, which means he’s been waiting for this call. “I heard. Pavel texted me.”
“I need you here.”
“I’m already in the car.”
I hang up.
The study feels too small. I walk to the window and look out at the grounds and think about Mila asking me to read the next chapter of the dragon book. About Alexei lining up his toy cars with that precise spacing he can never quite explain. About Anna in Viktor’s living room, telling me she can’t trust me with her chin up, her hands steady, and her eyes giving nothing away.
They have my children.
They have my wife.
The anger is not the hot kind. It hasn’t been the hot kind since I was twenty years old and still made mistakes because of it. It’s the cold kind, the kind that doesn’t shake or shout or lose its footing, the kind that moves in a straight line from where I’m standing to the thing I need to destroy and doesn’t stop for anything in between.
Pavel ends his call. “One of my contacts in the eastern network says the Malikovs have a secondary site. Industrial complex near the river, forty minutes outside the city. Disused mostly, they use it when they need somewhere quiet.”
“Is he certain?”
“Certain enough. He says there was movement there this afternoon. Vehicles arriving. More security than usual.”
“That’s it.”
“Probably.”
“Not probably. That’s it.” I move to the cabinet behind my desk and open it. “Get the vehicles ready. I want six men minimum, more if you can pull them in the next twenty minutes. Armed. And I want a medic on standby outside the perimeter.”
“The medic is already arranged. I called when I first got word.”
I look at him. He looks back at me.
“You knew they’d take them,” I say.
“I knew it was a risk when you told me to double the team, and it wasn’t enough. I should have pushed harder to get Anna back inside the estate.” He holds my gaze. “That’s on me.”
“It’s on me,” I say. “I’m the one who let her stay there.”
I pull on my jacket and check the weapon at my back. Pavel starts making calls. The house shifts around us, staff clearing out of corridors as my security team begins moving through it with the particular energy of men who know what’s coming and are ready for it.
Maxim arrives in twenty minutes. He walks straight past Elena without stopping, finds me in the foyer, takes one look at my wrapped hand, and says nothing about it.
“What do you need from me?” he asks.
“You stay behind the first line. You’re coordination, not contact. If something goes wrong with Pavel, you’re the one giving orders.”
“Understood.”
“And Maxim.” I look at him. “If the twins are scared when we get in there, you stay with them. You don’t leave their side.”
Something moves across his face. “I won’t leave them.”
Six vehicles pull around to the front of the estate. Fourteen men. Pavel runs through the layout of the industrial complex from a map pulled up on his tablet, entry points, sightlines, and where they’re most likely holding the family based on the building’s structure.
I look at the map for thirty seconds. That’s enough.
“Pavel.” I pull on my coat.
“Yes.”
