Page 62

Inside was a ledger. It wasn’t impressive, which surprised me. After everything the book had survived—thirteen years, a trip across the Atlantic, the rise and fall of several criminal empires—I expected something larger, older, maybe even bound in black leather with a gold crest stamped on the front, possibly glowing or sparking. Instead, it was a narrow bookkeeping ledger with worn brown corners, a cracked spine, and several loose pages held together by a faded elastic band. The sort of thing an ordinary shopkeeper might keep beneath a register to track deliveries.

Matteo pulled on thin gloves before touching it.

“Raffaele’s street captain kept this the night of Mila’s attack,” he said. “Inside it is every unfamiliar car that entered Bellandi territory, every man our people saw, and every known contact used by the Volkovs afterward.”

Matteo opened the ledger and explained that the first pages contained vehicle plates, makes and models, colors, and times written in two different hands. Four Volkov vehicles had entered the neighborhood during the hour surrounding Mila’s murder. One was listed twice—first near her building, then outside the municipal morgue before dawn.

I noted that the name Mila had been mentioned around me several times now. At the security facility and during the call with Raffaele, it was always spoken carefully, like a piece of broken glass everyone else knew was on the floor.

No one had told me who she was yet.

Matteo turned another page to reveal a photocopy of a vehicle lease. Most of the print had faded, but the company name at the top remained clear.

“The sedan outside the morgue was leased under Veles Maritime Holdings three days before Mila died. The account was paid for in advance and closed before the car was returned. At the time, Veles looked like a disposable shipping company. It had no Bellandi contracts, no registered connection to the Volkovs, and nothing that led back to Mikhail Orlov. At the time, we didn’t know Sokolov could have been behind it,” Matteo explained.

Sergei finally sat down. “So, the Volkovs used an Orlov shell to stage Mila’s murder,” he said.

“It would appear so, but there’s more,” Matteo added.

A photograph had been tucked inside a paper sleeve.

The image was grainy, black-and-white, and taken from high above a club entrance. Two men stood beneath an awning in the rain. One was Yuri Volkov. I recognized both men from the old photographs Ivan and Kit had shown me. The other man was thinner, with rimless glasses and receding gray hair.

It was Viktor Sokolov.

“They met?” I asked.

“At one of our Brooklyn clubs,” Matteo answered. “Three weeks before Mila was killed. Yuri entered through a service door without arranging permission. Bellandi security photographed him because he was trespassing on our territory.”

“And Sokolov?”

“We didn’t know who he was at the time. Not then. He used a different name and left separately.”

Sergei took the photograph between two gloved fingers. It looked small in his hand.

“This proves Yuri Volkov had direct contact with Mikhail Orlov’s financier before he ordered the attack on Mila,” Matteo concluded.

The room settled into silence. Rain moved softly against the windows, barely more than a whisper through the glass. The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. Somewhere in the rear lane, one of Sergei’s guards closed a vehicle door.

Sergei looked at the photograph for a long time before he placed it beside the lease.

“I need the archival box,” he said eventually.

“It’s in the study?” I asked.

“I’ll go get it,” Sergei said.

“I’ll come with you,” I offered.

His study occupied the rear corner of the first floor, facing the enclosed courtyard. I remembered it from my first night in the townhouse, though I hadn’t been inside it for more than a minute.

It was still the most orderly room in the house. Books were arranged by subject. Files were labeled in the same spare black handwriting. One chair was angled toward the door, and another was positioned so no guest could sit beyond his line of sight.

Sergei crossed to the locked cabinet I had seen that first night. He entered the code and turned the physical key. The door opened. Inside were the same medical kits, cash packets, spare weapons, encrypted phones, and black folders I remembered. The narrow steel archival box still rested on the bottom shelf beside the silver picture frame Sergei had kept facedown and the sealed cream-colored envelope.

To reach the box, Sergei moved the frame first.

For one brief second, the photograph turned toward me. The woman in it was sitting on a kitchen counter with one bare foot resting against a cabinet door. Dark hair fell loose around her shoulders, and she was laughing at whoever held the camera, one hand lifted as though she had just told him not to take the picture and knew he would ignore her. She looked alive in a way old photographs rarely managed.