“Keep Anastasia under full watch,” I say. “Do not let her know.”
“You think she is dirty?” he asks.
“I think she is in reach,” I say. “Reach can twist anyone. We watch her until we know.”
“Understood,” he says.
I end the call and climb into the car. The bear sits on my lap. I look at its stitched eyes and feel something dark and sharp settle in my chest.
We drive back to the compound. The team is already formed. Kirill stands near the SUV, maps in hand. The men are in plain winter gear. No clear marks.
I strap on my vest. I check my weapons. Pistols. Knife. Extra mags. Nothing heavy. We want speed.
Andrei hands me a small folder.
“Property plans for the cottage,” he says. “Entry points. Window layout. Old photos.”
I flip through. The photos show a small house with a blue roof and red trim. The door has a carved fox and a round sun. The well ring stands to the right, with three iron hooks for buckets. The trees behind it are tall. In one picture, a thin birch leans at an angle.
The song did not lie.
We move out. The engines are low. We take the main road toward the ring, then north. Traffic thins. City lights fall back.
No one talks much. Kirill sits up front with the map. He calls turns. “Next exit,” he says. “Then straight for twenty minutes. Then the bridge.”
I stare out at the dark and think of the boy whose name sat on that shell company. We grew up in the same narrow halls. We stole bread from the same shop when we were small. I pulled him out of a fight once when older boys kicked him. He looked at me that day with a stare I did not know how to read. It was not gratitude. It was something else. A hardness. A promise to himself that he would never be under a boot again.
He came to me years later when I first took a corner from the older men. He wanted in. I gave him a chance. He smiled and said he would build something better for both of us.
In the end, he tried to build it for himself only. He moved funds. He sold routes. I cut him out. I did not kill him. I thought exile would be enough. Men like him always find some lesser crew and fade.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he used that exile as fuel.
We pass the Klin sign. The road grows rough. Snow lines the shoulders. Ahead, I see the first bridge over a narrow cut of water. Then the second. Then the third. Half the guardrail is torn where the flood took it years ago. The pavement drops at the edge.
Nadia’s small voice echoes in my head. “Broken third bridge.”
“Take the next right,” Kirill says. “Small road. No light.”
We turn. The car jolts over ruts. Tall pines rise on both sides. Their trunks catch our headlights. I count them in my head.When we pass a crooked birch that leans over the ditch, my neck tightens.
“Slow,” I say.
We roll forward. The trees open. A narrow lake stretches ahead, pale under the sky. On the far shore, a line of dark shapes stands. Cottages. Blue roofs.
We kill the lights and coast. The engine noise drops.
“Park here,” I say. “We walk the rest.”
We pull onto a flat patch and cut the engine. The second SUV stops behind us. Men spill out, low and quiet. Cold air hits my face. The smells of frozen water and old wood sit heavily.
We fan out. The ground crunches under our boots. No dogs bark. No cars move. The cottages sit in a row. Some shutters hang crookedly. One roof has lost tiles. The house at the far end has a faint shape on its door. As we get closer, the carving comes clear.
A fox. A round sun.
Cottage eight.
I raise my fist. The line stops.
