It was a cruel reminder—my belly still bulged outward, the shape of it unchanged, the body not yet catching up with what had happened inside it. I stroked it beneath the blanket anyway. The way I had been doing for months. The hand finding its way there without permission, the same as always.
Except now it was empty.
I blinked and registered what was on the screen.
A nappy commercial.
I had still been weighing the benefits ofpodguznikagainstpelyonka. Disposable against natural cloth. Reading about the importance of fabric against new skin, the chemicals in synthetic liners, the environmental argument versus the practical one. So important for the baby’s skin.
Such a specific and useless thing to still know.
Someone cleared their throat.
A man.
Men were the root of all the problems in the world.
I let the tears come. Didn’t wipe them. Didn’t turn away from the screen. Just let them run while my hand stayed pressed against the empty belly beneath the blanket and the nappy commercial played on and the sun stayed warm and none of it meant anything.
Vadim was occupied by vengeance. He had somewhere to put it — the rage, the loss, the need to make something bleed. I had nothing. No outlet. No normality. No job to dress for, no life that existed outside this room and this blanket and this body that still looked pregnant and wasn’t.
Just existing inside my prison.
I closed my eyes.
Someone sat near my feet. A gentle pat on my legs through the blanket—careful, deliberate, the touch of someone who understood that touch needed to be asked for right now.
It could only be my brother. No one else would dare.
I didn’t open my eyes.
Eventually the slumber came.
Restless, as it always was now.
Chapter 41
Vadim
Tau had earned his place in the derelict building.
The structure had been chosen for exactly what it was—remote, unremarkable, the kind of place that appeared on no record worth checking. The walls held damp the way old buildings do, the cold finding every gap in the masonry and settling there permanently. What remained of the roof offered little shelter from the bitter nights. The smell had developed its own character over the days—rot, rust and the distinct sourness of a body under sustained duress. Men who had done this work before stopped noticing it after the first hour. The newer ones breathed through their mouths and said nothing.
Bogdan had taken his place back at the house. Ruslan and Konstantin had joined today’s proceedings instead.
The click of the lock made me rotate my head in preparation for what the room had become.
Tolam lay curled in the far corner, his clothes torn and dark with blood and other evidence of the days he had spent here. His breathing was audible from the doorway—shallow and deliberate, the breathing of a man who had learned to conserve everything. I could see why he had led his organisation. He had held his tongue longer than most men would have. But there was a point every man reached eventually, and he was approaching it.
Konstantin crossed to the bucket and filled it from the standpipe with icy water, the sound of it hitting the metal loud in the damp silence.
Tau moved toward Tolam without hurry. He studied him for a moment—the assessment of someone deciding where to begin—then moved away again to collect a length of thick rope from the corner.
Konstantin threw the bucket.
A rude awakening for my guest.
Tolam gasped and tried to curl tighter. Tau nudged him with his boot—not hard, but with the particular patience of someone who had all the time available and knew it—until he lay flat on his back. Then Tau crouched over him and began to work.
