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So, I stood alone beside the grave with Raffaele, two Bellandi guards, and a priest whose quiet words disappeared into the wind.

The ground had turned to mud beneath my shoes. One of the stitches behind my ear pulled whenever I moved my head. I watched the coffin vanish inch by inch and thought about the apartment, the screaming kettle, Mila’s fingers around my wrist, and all the little signs I should have noticed sooner.

A different car outside her work. A man I had seen twice near the market. The uptick in unfamiliar vehicles parked on the street outside of her apartment.

I had simply failed to understand those signs at the time.

After the burial, Raffaele took me to a Bellandi safe house and placed a sealed medical envelope in my hands.

“The examiner’s report,” he said. “There is something in it you should see.”

I opened it.

The report contained several pages of cold medical language describing her wounds, blood loss, and the final ruin of a body I had known better than my own. Near the bottom of the second page was a separate finding.

I read it.

Then I read it again.

For the first time since entering Mila’s apartment, my hands stopped obeying me. The paper trembled once between my fingers, and the room seemed to move farther away even though neither Raffaele nor I had moved.

I hadn’t only lost the love of my life.

I’d lost a child.

Our child.

I sat down because my legs no longer held my weight. Raffaele turned toward the window, giving me the dignity of not being watched while whatever remained alive inside me died in complete silence.

I do not know how long I stayed that way. Eventually, I folded the report along its original crease. I did it carefully, lining up every edge before returning it to the envelope. The corners had to meet. The paper had to fit. It was the only thing in the room I could still control.

“You gave her back her name. Not only that, but you gave her a proper burial.”

“Yes.”

“And you kept me alive.”

“I did.”

“Name your price.”

His mouth tightened. “This was not business.”

“Everything is business.”

“No.” His eyes moved briefly toward the envelope beneath my hand. “Not everything.”

I waited, and Raffaele studied me for a long moment, perhaps deciding whether grief had made me honest or simply reckless.

“One day, Morozov, I may ask you for a favor.”

“You will only need to ask once,” I told him.

A week later, I returned to my brothers. Maxim knew Mila was dead. He knew the Volkovs had ordered it. He knew Raffaele Bellandi had pulled me from the apartment and made certain Mila was buried with the dignity of her own name, but he didn’t know the rest.

After that, I stopped believing safety was something a person could feel. Safety was planning. It was routes, redundancies, overlapping cameras, and drivers whose histories had been checked three times and then again. It was never sitting with your back to a door. It was knowing which doctor answered before the second ring and which police officer could be trusted when there was blood on the floor.

I learned every possible way someone could reach the people I loved.