Page 117 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

Leonid coughs. “Doctors for both of you would be useful.”

Maksim ignores him. “Dima.”

“Here.”

“Moretti’s men stay contained. Mancini talks only with Leonid present. No one leaves until every copy is secured.”

Dima nods and moves.

Bodies are lifted. Phones are collected. Pages are dried, scanned, sealed. I look at the side door where Sergei disappeared. The machine he built is still standing.

Now it opens for me.

We leave through the freight elevator with Dima ahead and Ilya behind us. Maksim keeps one hand at my back, and I keep pretending I don’t need it. His shirt sticks, dark at his side. My forearm burns where glass cut me, and my lower back aches with every step.

In the car, Maksim calls Abramov.

“Estate,” he says. “Dr. Markova for Elena. Grachev for the men. Both waiting.”

“I’m fine,” I say. “She can come tomorrow.”

“No.”

His hand comes up behind my neck and pulls me toward him, my head settling against his shoulder, his arm holding me there.

“Rest,” he says.

The estate is awake when we arrive. Floodlights cover the drive. Men stand at the entrance in pairs, and no one looks at me the way they used to. They look, lower their eyes, and stand aside.

Abramov comes down first, coat open, radio in hand. “House is clean. Karpov’s men are locked down in the west wing.”

Petrov appears behind him. “Warehouse access is holding. Moretti’s men are backing off the northern line.”

Maksim nods. “Hold it. No new movement without my say. Flag anything that shifts.”

Leonid steps out of the second car with his laptop case clutched to his chest. One corner is nicked where a bullet glanced off. His glasses sit crookedly, his hair is wrecked, and he looks deeply offended by the praise coming from every direction.

“You held a laptop during a gunfight,” I say. “That’s very committed of you.”

He adjusts his glasses. “It was encrypted.”

Nina Voronina comes from the downstairs office with a registry folder tucked to her chest, pale but composed. She stayed here with the registry channel open while Leonid scanned from the meeting, pushing each page through before Sergei’s people could stall the chain.

“The confirmations held,” she says, looking at me first. “Your signatures are logged.”

I meet her eyes. “Thank you.”

She straightens. “It was my job.”

Maksim takes her hand and presses it once. “You did it well.”

Nina turns pink, and Leonid mutters, “Give it a minute. Praise makes registry people reckless.”

Mrs. Wentworth waits in the hall with Lidiya beside her, sleeves rolled, mouth set for war. Lidiya carries towels, a basin, and folded blankets. Her eyes go to the blood on my sleeve, then to my stomach.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“No, you’re excited and bleeding,” Mrs. Wentworth says. “Sit.”