Page 9 of Nemesis

My lighter clicks open, flaring as it comes into contact with the tip. The first inhale of smoke fills my lungs, soothing something restless within.

“Don’t smoke in front of the boss or his wife,” Ivan mutters, sliding the blade back into its case and drawing his gun. “They don’t want their kid breathing it in.”

I glance up at the mention of a kid, nodding earnestly as I snuff out the flame. Fair enough. I don’t want Anya near that shit either. That’s the main reason I’d never indulged in Russia. I never wanted her to smell the smoke clinging to my clothes the way it burrowed into Uncle’s Armani suits. That scent still wraps around me in the dead of the night, five thousand miles away.

“Good work today,” Ivan says, methodically cleaning the barrel of his gun in the same fashion as his knife. I have no idea why he bothers cleaning something, all to get it bloody again. “Check in with the Pakhan later. He has something new for you.”

I’m already moving toward the door.

Outside, the cold wind hits my face, melting off as I slip into the blasting heat of my car. A shot reverberates through the air behind me, clean and final. Guess Federov’s name really was all they needed. I pull out of the lot without looking back.

By the time I reach the bridge back, city lights are scattered across the water like twinkling orbs in the dying sun. My adrenaline has nowhere left to go. It hums beneath my skin, insistent, demanding me to fight, fuck, do something. I don’t want to see another person for as long as I can reasonably avoid it, which eliminates most of my usual options.

I roll down the window and let the cold air in instead.

The interrogation itself is always straightforward for me. It’s the aftermath that requires management: the restlessness that comes from being wound so tight against an adversary who never really had the chance to hit back. In Moscow, I had routines for this. A specific bar where I’d pick up whoever was pliant and willing, anything to distract me until the comedown, when exhaustion eventually metabolized in my veins.

Here, I have three rooms, a dying radiator, and a bottle of vodka hardly full enough to fill a single shot glass. A sigh leaves my lips as I turn onto the next corner, and the final sliver of open sky disappears in my rearview mirror.

I was seventeen the first time I was taken.

My uncle’s enemies had been tracking our movements for weeks, and I was the most convenient target. Young enough to be underestimated, old enough to have overheard things worth extracting. I lasted four days before they decided I genuinely didn’t know enough to be worth the daily cup of water keeping me alive. What I didn’t learn until much later was that it had been a test. Uncle’s personal assessment of how much my loyalty could withstand under optimal conditions for breaking.

I passed.

I’ve thought about that often over the years—what would’ve happened if I did have something useful to pry out during those four days. I’m not sure if I passed because I was brave or because I was useless. My father died on an assignment when I was small, which meant no senior members were willing to vouch for me. Uncle had to verify my worth himself.

Now he has simpler ways to keep me in line.

At the red light, my finger moves to my phone before I’ve consciously decided to call. The ringing fills the car’s speakers for long, worrisome moments until she finally picks up.

“Vasi!”

My chest thaws.

Her voice does that every time without fail, reaching past the violence that’s filled the last few hours of my life and finding whatever is left underneath. I don’t know what I’d do if that stopped working. I try not to think about it.

“Anya!” My voice automatically finds the soft tone I haven’t used in weeks. “How are you, zayka?”

“I miss you!” God, I miss her too. “When will you come back for a playdate?”

Her little voice wobbles over the bigger words, and my heart clenches in a hopeless ache. “It might be a little while before our next playdate. I’ve been doing research, though.” I laugh. “On the princess tea party pitch you made last time.”

The shriek that fills the car is so loud that my ears ring with pain, and I grin through the assault.

“Maybe for, for my birthday? I’m turning six next. If you forgot.”

“I didn’t forget.” The grin frays at the edges. Will Solokov give me leave for her birthday? Would I even ask? “Have you seen Mother lately, zayka?”

“No.” The single syllable carries the sad tone of someone who’s learned that expectations only lead to disappointment. It fills me with a cold, quiet rage that has nowhere to go. My hands grip the wheel. “But Nanny and I have been learning to paint. I made you a picture.”

“I can’t wait to see it. Maybe you can ask Nanny to send me a photo?”

I pull into the underground parking garage and sit in the dark for a while after she hangs up, listening to the silence spill back in. Leaving her was the hardest thing I’ve done. That was part of my punishment.

Our mother was a Bratva princess in the original sense; bartered off to cement an alliance, never consulted, and never particularly interested in the children that resulted from the union. When she remarried and had Anya, I understood immediately that history was about to repeat itself. I couldn’t take Anya as my own responsibility, not with the life I was living. So I did what I could: hired the best nannies I could find, paid for her security out of my own earnings, and called every chance I got.

She holds the last clean shard of my soul. Uncle knows that, too.