Page 26 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

Then I head downstairs, spot the first guard I know by name, and ask, “Did your boss send this?”

Exactly what I can handle when my head’s pounding and my mood’s gone to hell.

The guard keeps his face blank in that trained house way. “The kitchen was told, Miss.”

I take the tray back upstairs and drink the tea, anyway, annoyed by how fast it does its job. That’s how he takes care of people. No speeches. No soft looks. It comes dressed up as routine. Eat. Sleep. Stay on cleared routes. Take the car. Don’t disappear. And because apparently, control isn’t enough, he starts sending work too.

It happens this way. On the second day, I step into his ground-floor office and find him at the table with a handful of men already working. Leonid is there, papers spread out, glasses low on his nose. His face could sour milk.

I lean against the doorframe. “Am I interrupting something dull and expensive?”

One corner of Maksim’s mouth moves. “That depends. Have you come to fix it?”

The men at the table keep their faces straight. Leonid doesn’t even bother pretending he likes me here.

Maksim hooks two fingers around the back of the empty chair at his right and pulls it out. “Sit.”

Leonid clears his throat. “Pakhan, we’re in the middle of sequence review.”

“I know where we are,” Maksim says, not looking at him. Then his gaze comes back to me. “Sit down, Elena.”

I walk over and take the chair without giving him the satisfaction of hesitating. The files are already open, three corporate names, one freight shell, one warehouse holding group, and one maintenance company that clearly exists to lie for the other two. I can tell that much in ten seconds, which probably says bad things about my upbringing.

Leonid taps the first page with his pen. “The warehouse company stays insulated if the nominee layer holds. The registrar filings are already paid through, and the backdated continuation filing is old enough to blend.”

I look at the page, then the next one, then the signature sheet clipped behind it.

“No,” I say.

Nobody speaks.

Leonid’s jaw tightens. “No?”

I lift the last page. “Because this is wrong. The dates are trying too hard to look settled, and the signature chain doesn’t match the filing sequence. If anyone checks it properly, it won’t blend. It’ll stand out.”

Silence sits over the table for a beat.

After that, Maksim tells Leonid to send up another set of files for me to review. Keeping me busy, apparently, sounds better in Russian when it comes with folders.

It becomes a pattern.

On the fourth night, I can’t sleep.

My head is crowded with legal language, old anger, and the younger Italian on that screen saying unclaimed like he was talking about a package nobody had bothered to pick up. I lie there for too long, staring at the ceiling, getting mad all over again. Finally, I throw back the covers, pull a sweater over my nightdress, and go downstairs for water because apparently, rage now keeps the same hours as the rest of this house.

The kitchen lights are on.

I stop in the doorway.

Maksim is sitting alone at the long, scarred table under the hanging lamp, jacket gone, sleeves rolled once, collar open. There’s food in front of him, black bread, cold roast meat, mustard, and a knife laid down any old way, which feels weirdly personal for a man who usually looks like he was born ironed. A board leans beside him, marked up with names and arrows and a few notes pinned in place. Work, then.

He looks up when I step in.

For a second, neither of us says anything.

Then he says, “You need sleep.”

I head for the cupboard and take down a glass. “You need food that didn’t come out of a soldier’s backpack.”