Page 45 of My Wedding Night Massacre

“He’d want the one further north,” she says, her finger moving to one of the two marked addresses. “It’s harder to approach from the street. More time to see something coming.” She straightens. “That’s how he thinks about children. They’re assets requiring protection, not from harm, but from loss of control. He’d put Denis somewhere with better sight lines.”

I circle the northern property.

Misha’s phone vibrates on the table. He briefly looks at it, then sets it down.

“Gachev,” he says, his eyes on me now.

I look at him and raise my brows.

“Not through any channel we gave him,” Misha says. “He found his own. The message came through Leoni’s network, which means he has reach we didn’t even know about.” He picks the phone up and turns the screen toward me.

The message is four sentences. David Gachev has information about Bogdan’s current security arrangements and Denis’s location. He’s willing to share it. He wants nothing in exchange except confirmation that Pavlina is safe. He’s available to meet at a time and location of our choosing.

I read it twice.

Pavlina is looking at the phone beside me. I don’t look at her face. Instead, I look at the message for a second longer and sit with it. This is the kind of information that requires giving it some thought before acting on it.

I don’t trust it. That’s the first position, and it’s the right one. A man who was embedded in Bogdan’s circle long enough to be chosen as Pavlina’s second husband has access to information and also to Bogdan. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. He could be Bogdan’s instrument, sent to establish contact, draw us out, and feed us false information about Denis’s location that walks us into a position Bogdan controls.

But at the same time, I also can’t dismiss it. Gachev was in that circle. He attended the dinners, the meetings, and the negotiations. He was present when decisions were made that I wasn’t present for. If he has genuine information about Denis’s location, dismissing it because I don’t trust the source is the kind of decision that could cost me my son.

And there’s the other thing. The thing I keep returning to.

Gachev walked out of his own wedding. Not because he was forced, not because the situation made it impossible to stay, but because he decided he wasn’t going to participate. He looked at what was happening in that church and made a choice that cost him more than I’m probably aware of. Definitely an alliance with Bogdan and a position at the top of three organizations. By walking out of his own wedding, he rejected whatever Bogdan had offered him.

Men who walk out of rooms when they could stay, and benefit, tend to be motivated by something other than calculation. I haven’t yet figured out what motivates Gachev, but I know what Bogdan’s instruments look like, and right now, Gachev doesn’t look like one.

“Set up a meeting,” I say. “Neutral ground, somewhere public enough that a problem becomes a problem for him too. Somewhere, we can see the approaches.” I pause. “Be careful.”

Misha nods, already picking up his phone.

Pavlina is looking at me. “You think he’s genuine.”

“I think he might be,” I say. “I think he’s worth forty minutes of my time to find out.”

She’s quiet for a moment, reading my face. Seemingly satisfied with what she saw, she nods once. She knows Gachev better than I do. She must’ve arrived at the same conclusion because she’s not trying to convince me otherwise.

“He told me he wasn’t interested in pretending,” she says. “At the engagement dinner. He said he’d found pretending exhausting.” She pauses. “He meant it. I know when someone means it.”

I look at her. “I know you do.”

She holds my gaze for a beat, then turns back to the map. I also turn back to the map. Misha is on his call in the corner of the room, his voice low, setting the terms of a meeting with a man who was almost my wife’s husband and who may have just become the most useful person in the city.

The net tightens. I look at the two circled properties, the eight positions around the east side, the columns of contingencies, the four sentences on Misha’s phone, and I think about a boy with grey eyes in a room somewhere north or possibly even east of here who doesn’t know his father is coming.

But I am coming.

I’ll always come for him. For Pavlina.

For my family.

30

Pavlina

Sleep doesn’t come.

I lie in the dark room and listen to the villa breathe around me, the distant sounds of Misha somewhere doing whatever Misha does when the rest of the world is trying to rest. My mind keeps returning to Denis. I toss and turn, but sleep doesn’t come. My son is on top of my mind.