Page 47 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

The thought intrudes: What would it take for her to look at me like that?

“Who is he?”

“Mark Callahan,” Yuri says. “Med student she met at NYU. He followed Tamara to Russia during a summer exchange. No family connections. No protection.”

Which means vulnerable.

“Where is he now?”

Yuri’s expression doesn’t change. “He died six months later.”

I keep studying the photo. “How?”

Yuri hesitates for the first time since entering the room.

“Kalinin had him killed.”

I keep my expression still because the alternative is standing up and doing something I’ll regret.

Igor swears under his breath.

I turn another page.

Hospital records. Partial. Redacted. Tamara Kalinin. Twenty. Emergency admission. Pregnancy complications.

My pulse slows instead of speeding up. That’s never a good sign.

“She had a baby,” Yuri says.

It takes my mind a second too long to accept the shape of the sentence.

I think about the panic beneath her composure. The way she protects autonomy like survival. The grief that keeps surfacing under the anger, the cathedral, and the way she looked at me the first night and said, “I almost wish you were awful.”

None of it feels abstract anymore.

“What happened to the baby?” I ask.

Yuri turns the next page instead of answering immediately.

“That’s where it gets complicated.”

No one speaks. Rain taps softly against the windows behind us.

“There is a death certificate,” Yuri says finally. “And burial records. At first glance everything appeared to be legitimate.”

I look up slowly.

“At first glance?”

“The attending physician signed paperwork for neonatal complications.” Yuri turns to another document. “Except the doctor in question left the hospital six months earlier.”

Igor straightens away from the window.

Yuri continues calmly, “The cremation authorization routes through a funeral home that never processed infant remains under that name. We kept pulling threads.” A pause. “Then we found continuing financial transfers tied to one of Kalinin’s operatives beginning two weeks after the reported death.”

“Jesus Christ,” Igor mutters quietly.

A terrible possibility begins taking shape in my mind. Yuri opens another file.