I peel the tape back from Mikhail’s mouth just enough.
“You wanted to feed me to your ghost,” I say. “You gave him my house. Now you sit here and think about how you’ll answer for that when I come back.”
His eyes are wild. “Sergei, listen, he will not meet without you in that cellar,” he whispers. “If you don’t go, he will go for her again. You know that.”
“He already went for her,” I say. “You helped.”
I put the tape back and walk out before I decide to do more.
In the entry, I choose my team. Vlad, Kirill, and four more men I trust with my life and my last bullet. Raina stands by the door already in her coat, pistol in the pocket, hair pulled back tight. She meets my eyes without a word. We both know this trip can go wrong in ten different ways. We still go.
“House protocol stays up,” I tell Andrei, who is on control detail. “You keep the safe room sealed. No one opens that door except me or Raina. If the main power cuts again, you run on the internal line only. You do not reconnect to the building grid until I say. You treat every external signal as hostile. If something touches the system that you cannot explain, you shut everything down and you move to the safe room. You sit on the floor with a gun and you wait.”
He nods once, jaw tight. “Yes, Pakhan.”
“Andrei,” I add, “if that door opens and it is not us, you shoot.”
His eyes do not shake. “I will,” he says.
We take the service elevator to the underground garage. The doors open to concrete and cold air. Two black SUVs wait, engines already running. Vlad takes the wheel of the lead car. I sit up front. Raina gets in behind me with Kirill and anotherman. The doors shut. The city closes around us when we pull out into the night.
Moscow slides past in strips of light and shadow. I feel the weight of the pistol at my hip and the knife at my back. I feel Raina’s gaze on the back of my neck and the pull that always starts in my chest when she is near and in danger. I force my breathing even.
“The bathhouse,” I say, watching the road. “He chose that place for a reason.”
Raina leans forward between the seats. “He knows it holds memory for me since it’s connected to my kidnapping,” she says.
“He also knows half the city still believes it’s mine,” I say. “Old money on the board, old favors. If there is trouble there, my name will bleed out before the first unit arrives. He wants noise or he wants time. Maybe both.”
Vlad changes lanes, steady hands, no waste in the movement. “Perimeter cars are set,” he says. “Two blocks out, all sides. No one moves closer without our call.”
“Good,” I reply with a nod. “We treat this as a trap from the first second. No one rushes. We look before we step.”
“About the gas,” Raina says. “The last message in the music box mentioned heat and pipes. He plays with patterns. Watch the mains.”
“I’m watching everything,” I answer briefly.
Traffic thins as we reach the Garden Ring. The bathhouse sits ahead, low stone front, glass doors, old neon sign on the roof. Steam curls up from a side vent into the cold air. The street isalmost empty. Two parked cars. No line at the door. No smokers. That alone puts a bad taste in my mouth.
“Kill headlights,” I say.
Vlad clicks them off and we roll slow. I study the windows. No movement inside. The front desk is dark. A single security camera sweeps over the sidewalk and the service lane.
“Keep going,” I say. “Don’t stop at the door.”
We drive past once, then circle around the block. On the second pass, Vlad eases the SUV into the narrow alley that runs behind the building. A metal service door faces the lane. One light burns above it. A second camera sits under the eave. Both cameras blink on the same rhythm, which means they are tied to something that is not the standard grid.
“Signal?” I ask.
Kirill checks the handheld in his lap. “Two wireless networks from the building. One is the public system, weak and open. One is new, high strength, no SSID, running on a hidden channel.”
Raina looks at the readout over his shoulder. “That is not bathhouse tech,” she says. “That is a private node. Portable or recently installed. He is sitting on his own pipe.”
“So he wants us inside that box,” I say.
“Yes,” she says. “He’s waiting to watch.”
“Then we show him what we want him to see,” I say.
