I straighten.
“Why?” I ask.
She presses her lips together. Her small fingers twist the bear’s ear. Tears rise in her eyes again, but she fights them.
“When Mama went away, I was here,” she says. “I was in my room. I drank cocoa. Then I slept. When I woke up, she was gone.”
Her voice shakes. She swallows.
“I don’t feel safe here,” she says. “I don’t want to sleep in that room. I don’t want to sleep with the bears here. I want to go with you.”
Her words hit me straight. Behind her, Anastasia’s hand lands on the back of the chair at last. Her knuckles are white. “Nadia,no,” Anastasia says quickly. “Your father is going to a dangerous place. You can’t go with him.”
“I didn’t say with him,” Nadia says stubbornly. “I said not here. I can go somewhere else. I can go to Babushka’s house.” She means my mother’s mother, who is dead. Then she frowns. “No. She is in the ground. I can go to Aunt Tanya. Mama told me stories about her when we were hiding. She’s the kind one with the cat that scratches your boots.”
She says it in a rush, like she pulled it from the bottom of a drawer.
My aunt. My mother’s older sister, who lives in a small building in a quiet district two lines away. She never took my money for much and lives on her pension, her plants, and her cat. I send her gifts behind other names. She always knows and never complains or asks questions about my work. Raina met her once many years ago and liked her. I have a good feeling she’ll love Nadia.
It isn’t the worst idea.
“I can keep her here,” Anastasia interjects. Her voice is too quick. “This is a fortress, Sergei. We have steel, guards, the safe room. I know the protocols. I will stay with her every second.”
I look at her.
Her pupils are large. There is sweat at her hairline. Her hand still rests on the chair. I think of the cocoa and of Raina’s slow fall into sleep, and of the Courier saying his hands move inside my house.
My skin tightens. “I know the protocols,” I say coldly. “I wrote them.”
She flushes. “Of course,” she says softly.
I stand and scoop Nadia up. She clings to my neck at once. “We go step by step,” I say. “First we write everything down. Then we move you somewhere safe. Then I go hunt.”
I turn to the desk again. “Andrei,” I call through the open door.
He appears almost at once. He has been just outside, waiting. His hand rests on the gun at his hip. “Yes, Pakhan,” he says.
“Get me full maps of the area north of Klin,” I say. “I want every narrow lake with a dam, every old cottage row, every roof line marked blue in the last survey. I want property records for houses we ever held there. I want logs for any title transfers in the last ten years in those strips.”
“Yes,” he says. “I’ll start now.”
“Take Kirill in with you,” I add. “He will help cross-check against old shipment routes.”
Andrei nods and goes.
I look back at Anastasia.
“You help Nadia pack a small bag,” I say. “Enough for two nights. Clothes, favorite toys, her toothbrush. Nothing else. No new gifts. No devices. No watches. Only what she already owns and trusts.”
Her mouth opens, then closes.
“You’re sending her out,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “To my aunt.”
“You’ll need someone to help with the child there,” she says. “Your aunt is old.”
Her words are true. The speed of them still makes my neck itch.
