Page 2 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

The van is parked crookedly, nose angled toward the alley, and there’s no plate on the back. They’re careful about the obvious things.

My phone is still in my hand. I unlock it and force myself to think.

Police, no.

Yulia, absolutely not.

Katya, not unless I want to spend the rest of my life hating myself.

My father, if he’s alive, is the reason this is happening. If he’s dead, calling his people gets me folded back into whatever arrangement he left behind.

I pull up my contacts anyway and stare at the list, furious at how useless it is. Clinic supervisor. Landlord. Two classmates. A professor who once told me I had courtroom instincts. Nobody who can get to a stairwell in central Moscow before the men below find me.

Another sound reaches me then, faint but clear. They’re knocking at my door.

The boots below stop moving and I hear the faint sound of someone manipulating the lock. Seconds later, steps sound inside the apartment and then someone curses.

Not a moment afterward, I hear them thump out onto the ninth-floor landing. “She won’t go down. Check the roof access and the garage.”

I’m already moving before he finishes.

This time, I take the stairs down fast, past my floor while they’re still breaking off from my landing above and below, and I don’t look toward my own landing because I know what I’ll see. My doormat. My locked door. The little brass number I screwed on myself after the landlord left it crooked.

I keep going, one hand on the rail, my bag thumping against my hip, my whole body narrowed to the practical things. Steps. Turns. Exit. Don’t fall. Don’t freeze. Don’t think about what happens if they get both stairwells covered before you reach the garage.

Mama used to say survival first, dignity after.

She was right about most things.

The garage door at the bottom opens into a short corridor smelling of damp stone. I hit it hard enough to bruise my shoulder, catch myself, and push through. Rows of parked cars. Strip lights overhead. A security camera in the corner. Good. I can use that. I head for the side pedestrian gate because the front ramp will be watched, and I’m halfway there when a man steps out from behind a pillar and blocks my path.

He’s tall, broad through the chest, black gloves, black jacket, clean shoes. I register two things quickly. He knows what he’s doing, and he isn’t one of my father’s usual Moscow suits. He looks at me with calm recognition, and that is somehow worse than if he’d smiled. “Elena Sokolov,” he says. “Come with me.”

I stop so fast my knees jar. “No.”

His expression doesn’t change. “Don’t make this harder.”

I glance left. Another man is already moving in from that side. Garage exit behind me. One in front. One closing the angle. Hands empty, which means they think they won’t need much. That makes anger rise under the fear and steady me a little. I take a defensive stance. “Who sent you?”

He doesn’t answer. “You’re coming with us.”

My shoulders square and I raise my chin just a little. “Tell me who sent you, and then I’ll decide whether to spit in your face before or after.”

The recognition of a problem flickers in his eyes just then. He reaches inside his jacket, and for one wild second I think gun, but what comes out is a folded photograph. He opens it and holds it up just far enough for me to see.

My father, tired, older, caught in profile walking into some building I don’t recognize. Across the bottom, in blue ink, is one word in Russian.

Исчез.

Missing.

My heart kicks hard enough to make my vision blur for a second. “What is this?”

The man sighs and folds the picture before carefully returning it inside the jacket. He then stares at me with beetle-like eyes. “Proof you need to stop arguing.”

The second man is closer now. I can hear the scuff of his shoes on the concrete. I take one step back. “If you touch me, I’ll scream this building awake.”

“You can try,” the first man says, and his voice stays flat. “But by the time anyone opens a door, you’ll already be in the van.”