“I love you too,” she says, voice cracking again. “I mean it. You better come home or else.”
“I will as soon as I can. I have to go, but I’ll try to call again. You be careful too, okay? Don’t talk to anyone about this. Don’t answer any other unknown numbers besides this one. If anyone starts asking questions about where I am, pretend you don’t know me. Promise me.”
“Okay,” she says. “I promise.”
When the line goes silent, I’m left staring at the slowly darkening screen, grief and resolve twisting together in my chest like barbed wire.
I close my eyes and tighten my grip around the burner phone until the edge of it digs into my palm. The pain grounds me, pulls me back from the edge of unraveling. This is the path I’ve chosen. This is the cost I’ve decided to pay in exchange for my son’s life.
Maksim will end up hating me for it, for betraying him and eventhinkingof trying to convince him to hand over the Bratva to the man who took our son.
But maybe… hopefully, one day, he’ll understand that I didn’t do it to hurt him. That every lie, every deal, every risk was for Leo.
I swallow hard, blinking back the burn in my eyes, and draw a long, steady breath.
If I can’t be forgiven for it now, then maybe the only redemption left for me will be in making sure Leo lives long enough to mend the bridge between his father and me himself.
9
MAKSIM
The apartment is empty again when Roman and I travel back to visit Emily.
There’s something unsettling about the stillness that sets my nerves on edge. The soft whine of old plumbing behind the walls, echoes with the faint noise of our steps on the worn floor.
Roman mutters something under his breath in Russian—a clipped, biting curse—as he digs into his coat pocket to pull out his phone. He checks the screen with a growing scowl carved deep into his features. “She should’ve been back by now. Her schedule is fairly rigid.”
I don’t respond.
Not because I disagree, but because I feel the same unease curling in my gut and I’m not in the mood to say it aloud. Emily’s routine is consistent to a fault, second grade teacher by day, prenatal appointments precisely every other Thursday, groceries every Friday night, calls with her mother onSunday afternoons. The kind of habits built by someone who finds comfort in structure.
So, yeah. She should’ve been back by now.
The truth is, we’ve been running in circles since getting Ivy back. Half of our resources have been exhausted just trying to track Leo’s whereabouts, and the other half? Lost down more dead-end leads, false alarms, and ghost trails that all eventually point back to nothing.
Finding Emily had been a beacon in that fog. The first real light inside the darkness, guiding us down a new path. A thread that, when tugged, we all hoped would unravel the mystery of where Mikhail has been hiding and what he’s been planning.
But strangely… it hasn’t.
We thought he’d show up in person. That the pull of looming fatherhood—or whatever twisted approximation of it he felt for the child growing inside Emily—would compel him to visit her and touch base. At the very least, to maintain control the only way he knows how. Face to face.
But no.
Not once has he come out of hiding to see her. It’s just been encrypted phone calls twice a day like clockwork. A voice through a secured line that Matvey still hasn’t managed to crack, no matter how many layers of his firewalls we peel back.
Still, Emily has kept her word.
Through the wiretaps, I’ve listened to her speak with him in calm, measured tones. Not once has she slipped or hintedthat we’ve been in contact with her. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she really was the blissfully ignorant fiancée of a traveling businessman with too many secrets and not enough time for her.
She’s good.Damn good. I almost commend her for it.
Two days ago, we set up another meeting with her. Less formal than before, more like a check-in. We told her to act normal, to treat it like a friend stopping by for a cup of tea if Mikhail asked about her plans. It would only be a quick conversation and a few updates, nothing more.
Our meeting had been ten minutes ago and so far, there’s been no sign of Emily.
The bombshell we dropped on her less than a week ago about her fiancé living a double life as a Bratva puppet master and war criminal would be enough to break most people, let alone someone pregnant with his child.
But Emily hadn’t folded. At least not until now.
