Page 43 of Marrying the Pakhan

I watch the slow rise and fall of her breathing as it starts to even out. My hand moves absently along her back, tracing the same path over and over. Outside this room there are still threats, still men who would use anything soft in my life as a weapon.

Tonight, none of that reaches the bed.

She falls asleep against me within minutes, trusting, completely unguarded. I stay awake longer, staring at the ceiling, feeling the weight of every word I gave her and finding that I don’t want a single one of them back.

19

VIKTOR

Dimitri finds me in the garage, going through invoices on my phone while I wait for the car to warm up, and the look on his face tells me this isn’t about invoices.

“There’s a car,” he says. “Gray sedan, parked on the street two houses down. Been there since yesterday afternoon.”

“Delivery, maybe. Contractor working on the Hendersons’ place.”

“I thought that too, first time I noticed it. It’s still there this morning. Same spot, same angle, nobody’s gotten in or out of it that I’ve seen.”

That’s the detail that actually lands. Contractors move their vehicles. Deliveries don’t sit idle for eighteen hours.

“How’d you even clock it?” I ask. “You don’t usually walk this street.”

“I don’t. Ran here yesterday instead of taking the treadmill, needed to clear my head after the whole thing with the port shipment. Noticed it on the way out, noticed it again on the way back an hour later. Same spot exactly.”

“Plate?”

“Ran it already. Registered to a shell company out of the city, dissolved on paper eight months ago, still technically operating according to two other filings I found. Dead end unless you know how to read it a certain way.”

“And you know how to read it that way.”

“I’ve had practice.” Dimitri leans against the car beside me, voice dropping even though we’re alone in the garage. “Could be nothing. Insurance investigator, private security doing due diligence for somebody’s divorce case, any number of boring reasons a car sits somewhere too long.”

“But you don’t think it’s boring.”

“No. I don’t.”

Neither do I, and we both know exactly why, though neither of us says his name out loud in the garage, like saying it might summon something neither of us is ready to handle before coffee.

“Get a photo of whoever’s inside, if you can, without spooking them,” I say. “Discreetly. I don’t want them to know we’ve noticed.”

“Already tried. Windows are tinted enough that I couldn’t get anything useful from the street. Whoever’s in there knows what they’re doing.”

That settles it more than anything else could. Amateurs don’t tint windows specifically to defeat casual observation from a residential street. Professionals do.

“Double the men on the property starting tonight,” I say. “Rotate them so it doesn’t look like anything’s changed to anyone watching from outside. And get someone on that gray sedan specifically, not obvious, just enough to know if it moves, when, and where.”

“On it.” Dimitri hesitates before heading back inside. “Any update from your end? On the other thing?”

“Not yet. I’m meeting the contact again this afternoon. He’s still cautious, but he’s talking more than he was last week.”

“What’d he give you so far?”

“Confirmation Pavel’s been operating locally for at least three years, longer than we first thought. A legitimate business as cover, the same pattern he used before he vanished. Nothing on his actual plans yet, but he’s close to trusting me enough to talk specifics. I can feel it.”

“Careful with that. Trust built that slowly can turn just as easily if he senses he’s being managed instead of befriended.”

“I know how this works, Dimitri.”

“I know you do. Doesn’t mean I won’t say it anyway.” He knocks twice on the roof of my car, an old habit from when we were teenagers.