Page 18 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

By late afternoon, I’m walking the upper corridor when voices stop me cold.

The door ahead is shut. Men’s voices carry through old wood and expensive paint in that muted, controlled way men use when discussing things they believe belong to them.

I would keep moving if I heard my own name once. The problem is I hear it three times, along with three other words—listed, collateral, continuity. I go still beside a narrow table with a bronze lamp on it and listen with every nerve in my body.

“…doesn’t matter what she wants if the line recognizes the designation.”

Another voice, older. “It matters if he’s putting her under his name.”

“He already has.”

A chair moves. Papers shift.

“The Blacklist was never meant for public family disputes,” someone says. “It was debt law for men who couldn’t pay up. People have gotten more adventurous with what they put in—land, routes, shares, daughters, sons. If the debt had value, it went in.”

My hand tightens on the edge of the table. Another man answers, “And once it’s in, it draws eyes. That’s the point.”

A pause.

Then, quieter, “If Volkov means to keep her, he’ll need to formalize more than rumor. Moretti won’t sit still for much longer.”

My heart starts beating so hard it hurts.

I step back before anyone opens the door and walk away on legs that feel strange under me. Regardless of my situation, I won’t be found pressed to a wall like some maid listening for gossip.

I turn the corner, take the side stairs, and keep going until I’m in a part of the ground floor I haven’t seen yet, colder than the rest of the house and lined with locked cabinets. I try the door. It opens. The legal room, I realize a second later. Shelves of binders. Registry copies. Ledgers. Fireproof drawers. A long central table under green-shaded lamps. Leonid’s files are still out, and his chair sits pushed back, as if he only stepped away for a minute.

One drawer on the end stands slightly open. Curiosity gets the better of me and I go nearer to find a slim blue folder inside. It’s marked only with a date from six years ago and my initials in the corner.

My stomach folds in on itself.

I take it to the table and open it.

The first page is mine. I know it at once because I remember the room where I signed it. My father’s study. Late spring. He told me it was a temporary shareholder acknowledgment tied to a property hold and that refusing to sign would create tax complications for my mother’s estate. I had an exam the next morning. I was tired. Angry. Nineteen. He had already spent a week making my life ugly in small, inventive ways.

I signed to shut him up.

That page I remember.

The pages behind it I don’t.

Continuation authority. Contingent hold language. Emergency substitution if a principal became unavailable. Interim validation of attached structures listed elsewhere.

My signature sits at the bottom of two more pages, and one of them has been witnessed.

For a second I can’t breathe properly. When I can, I close the folder and carry it out before I can lose my nerve.

Maksim is in the study where he first sat me down, jacket off, tie gone, one hand braced on the desk as he reads something on a tablet. He looks up when I come in, and his eyes go straight to the folder in my hand.

“That room is locked for a reason,” he observes nonchalantly, his brow quirking a little.

I scowl at him. “Your drawer was careless.”

He beckons me with a finger. “Come here.”

I walk to the desk and drop the packet in front of him. “No broad answers tonight, and definitely no fragments.” My voice comes out steady enough to please me. “I heard men in this house discussing whether I count as collateral or continuity. I found papers with my actual signature on them. So now you’re going to stop speaking to me like I’m an inconvenient child and tell me exactly how much danger I’m in.”

He studies my face for a moment, then the folder. “Where did you hear that conversation?”