I flip the first ledger open.
Numbers stare back at me in neat columns. Dates, locations, transfers that make my stomach tighten the longer I read. The language is clinical, stripped of emotion, but the implications hum beneath the surface. Assets moved quietly from one holder to another. Payments routed through shell companies and trusts with innocuous names.
Page after page is the same.
It’s a steady, unbroken thread of transactions that tell a story of not just opportunism but long-term planning. I close the ledger slowly, my pulse loud in my ears.
The drawers are next.
They slide open without resistance, whisper-quiet, and reveal more of the same—folders, ledgers, documents grouped into sections so orderly it borders on obsessive. My fingers skim over the tabs, reading names that mean little to me until one of them stops me abruptly at the very back.
Morozov.
My breath catches again.
It shouldn’t surprise me. Of course Sasha would keep detailed records of every man he’s ever dealt with, especially one as slippery and self-serving as my father. Still, seeing it here so close and accessible sends a strange chill down my spine.
I pull the drawer open farther and slide the file free, the weight of it heavier than it should be. I place it carefully on the desk and sit down in his chair before peeling back the folder.
The first few pages are contracts, agreements signed and dated with Sasha’s signature in bold, decisive lettering. My father’s is next to it, thinner, almost desperate in comparison. The imbalance between them is obvious even on paper.
I spot my name a few times while I scan the rest of the pages. Referenced in clauses that make my stomach twist. Custodial language dressed up as protection. Safeguards. Terms and conditions. A life reduced to legal phrasing and obligations I never consented to.
This must be the contract that was drawn up after I was brought here after the bombing.
I don’t read it closely.
I can’t.
It already upsets me enough how easy it was to trade me away.
Toward the back of my father’s file, I notice that the pages change.
They’re more worn than the rest—corners softened, edges faintly curled as if they’ve been handled more often and returned to again and again. They’re nothing like the pristine, untouched paper of recent years, but something older. Something revisited.
My pulse quickens as I separate them from the stack. It’s another transaction list, I think at first. The same neat columns, dates, and amounts. Codes I don’t immediately understand as I scan it lazily, half-expecting my eyes to glaze over the way they had with the other ledgers.
But then one line detonates in my vision like a gunshot.
Payment rendered for removal — APPROVED, AUG. 2008.
My breath leaves me in a sharp, soundless rush.
2008?
That was the year my mother died.
My fingers tighten around the edge of the paper as I read it again, slower this time. Payment rendered for removal. Approved.
Removal?
My entire body goes cold like someone has poured ice straight into my veins.
No.
No, that—this—it has to be a coincidence. A clerical term… A euphemism for something else. Property or… assets that were traded in order for my father to jumpstart his political career. That makes sense. Thathasto be it.
I cling to it, gripping the idea with white-knuckled insistence, because the alternative is unthinkable.
