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I entered beside Maxim.

The warehouse floor erupted into movement. Sokolov still stood at the computer, one hand closing around the black key while the execution screen remained open. Alessia, Levon, Dmitry, and the nominee were gone.

“Her signal is moving north,” Kit said through my earpiece. “Deeper inside the building.”

Dmitry and Levon had taken her.

I began running in the direction they’d taken my wife, and two Petrosyan men stepped into my path. The first lifted a pistol, and I shot him before he finished aiming in my direction. The second reached for me from behind a storage crate, but Maxim caught him across the throat with one forearm and drove him down onto the concrete floor with a harsh crunch.

Near the computer, Sokolov saw us and tore the key free. The monitor flashed a warning across the screen.

Transfer Suspended—Authorization Window Closing

He snatched up the hard case, shoved the key inside, and ran from the glass office.

Aleksei intercepted him before he’d made three steps. My youngest brother caught the back of Sokolov’s coat, dragged him off balance, and drove him face-first into the floor. The hard case struck the concrete and sprang open. The physical key bounced once across the floor and stopped less than a foot from my boot.

I stared down at it.

One minute alone with Viktor Sokolov would answer questions the Veles records might not. One minute would also allow me to make certain he understood exactly what he’d done to the people I loved.

Sokolov looked over his shoulder and saw the look on my face. “Moscow,” he said quickly. “I have the original file on your parents.”

The collar receiver vibrated against my palm, and I immediately took a step back.

Sokolov continued. “Yuri’s authorization. Mikhail’s private correspondence. I can give you every name attached to your parents’ deaths. And Mila’s.”

Thirteen years ago, there was nothing that would have stopped me from taking him up on his offer.

Tonight, though, my wife was in danger, and she needed me.

“Tell my brothers instead.”

Sokolov just stared at me, disbelief written all over his face.

Aleksei’s grip tightened around the back of his neck. “You heard him.”

I kept moving through the warehouse. A steel door marked with an old customs warning waited for me in the back. I tried the handle, but it was locked.

“We’ll blast our way through,” Maxim said, catching my forearm.

One of our men fixed a narrow strip beside the lock. We moved behind the concrete corner. The blast cracked through the corridor, and the steel door jumped inward from its frame. The corridor beyond was narrow, lined with old customs offices and overhead pipes dripping condensation onto the floor. Emergency lights washed the walls in red. Somewhere farther ahead, a door slammed.

“They’re moving her,” I said.

Kit answered through static. “The backup signal stopped twenty yards north. It hasn’t gone dead. It’s stationary.”

Stationary could mean they had reached the room Dmitry prepared. Or that the collar had been removed.

I forced the second thought out of my head.

“I need her hand, not your permission,” Levon shouted, his voice carrying from beyond the closed door at the end of the hall.

“You get nothing until Morozov is here,” Dmitry answered him, his voice lower and impossible to mistake.

The final door was reinforced steel, built into the concrete wall beside an old freight elevator. No lock was visible on our side. Two men moved into position with the breach tool. The door gave beneath the third strike.

I saw Levon first, standing to the side next to a steel table with the authorization papers spread beneath his hand. Blood ran from his lower lip.