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Anika’s breath caught. “I need to go there. See what’s inside. She wanted us to find this, and this time, I’m going to listen to her secret message instead of ignoring it.”

My instinct demanded men at every hospital entrance and an armed team clearing the annex before Anika stepped out of the vehicle. I opened my mouth to voice the command, then closed it. Together. We had to do this together if I was to ever have any hope of truly earning Anika’s trust.

“If Alina left this for Anika, Sokolov may know about it.” Kirill tapped one finger beside the locker record. “We should assume the hospital is watched.”

“We should also assume a show of force tells him we found something important.” Roman highlighted a service entrance away from the emergency department. “I can get a man inside. He’ll get us through.”

I still wanted another answer. A harder one. Something that put armed men between Anika and every possible threat. We had survived together for decades because none of us needed to win an argument more than we needed the others alive, and I reminded myself of that as we worked through the route we’d need to take.

Anika watched the final route settle into place. “You’re all furious, and none of you are pretending otherwise. But you’re still listening to each other. That’s…” She gulped a deep breath and curled her shoulders in a crude shrug. “Just when I thought I understood you, you pull this nicety nice bullshit.”

“Roman is irritatingly difficult to ignore.” Kirill lifted the crane by one wing. “He uses charts.”

“You could overrule them.” Her gaze stayed on me as though willing me to revert back to the man who would’ve stormed the hospital without a second’s hesitation before I knew her. Before I’d spent the last few days getting to know her and Nora. “You could order whatever you wanted and make both of them follow.”

“I could.” I took the crane from Kirill and placed it in my palm, holding it out to her. “Then we might lose Nora because I valued authority more than the best plan in the room. I won’t be that man, Anika. It would be the easy way out, and it would cost me you and Nora. There is no world where I’ll choose being an ass over giving you up.”

Some of the fear left her expression. Not enough to ease mine, but enough for her to step between us when we left for the hospital.

Roman worked from the front passenger seat while Kirill watched the vehicles behind us through the mirrors. Anika sat beside me, one knee bouncing until I placed my hand over it.

“I hated that volunteer program.” Her fingers closed around mine. “The smocks smelled like bleach, and I cried in the bathroom the first day because a little girl asked if she was going to die.”

“What did Alina do?” It probably wouldn’t help distract her, but if we were to have any hope of ending this, we all needed to understand Alina better.

“Found the doctor and refused to move until he talked to the girl’s mother.” A broken smile, followed by a soft sob put her shoulder into my ribs and my arm around her. “Then she stole pudding for both of us and we spent an hour hiding on the roof and watching security look for us.”

The sister Anika remembered contradicted what we’d seen the last few weeks. Anika’s memory showed a sister’s love and her protecting Anika. Nowadays, Alina manipulated people and lied without hesitation. Loving someone didn’t mitigate or approve the risk and damage.

We pulled into the parking garage and made our way up and around, past the emergency department exit and higher.

“There. Sebastian has already mapped our route. We follow him to locker 317.” Roman pointed at a small side door and the man who leaned casually against it. He was a narrow man with tired eyes and a master key attached to his belt by a retractable cord. No one asked how he’d gotten it or how Roman managed to get him inside. Kirill and I both knew the answer, and we’d tell Anika the truth if she asked, but one look at her face and I understood that she already knew. And she’d accepted it…for now.

We passed the family waiting area outside oncology. A boy wearing a knitted green cap slept across two chairs with his head in his father’s lap. The father’s hand rested over the child’s chest as though he needed to feel every breath.

Four hundred armed men. The number felt obscene inside a place with so much suffering.

Anika saw the family and tightened her grip on mine. The volunteer annex occupied a sealed section below the original chapel. Faded cranes remained painted along one wall, their wings carrying names in a dozen childish handwriting styles. Anika touched one that read Mila before forcing herself to continue.

Locker 317 stood at the end of a line of rusted compartments, and Roman took the key from his man. “Let me check the door first.” He examined the seams, hinges, and narrow vent with a light from his pocket. Only after finding no wire, residue, or change in the dust did he step back. “It’s clear.”

Anika stared at the key. “I want to open it.” She held out her hand for the key, and Roman handed it over without a word. We lined up in front of the locker, Anika bracketed by the three of us as she opened the door.

Seven journals filled the upper shelf. They were cheap black notebooks, their spines marked with dates spanning almost six years. A child’s blue hospital bracelet sat on top of the earliest one. MIKHAIL PETROV had been printed above a date of birth.

Anika touched the name without lifting the bracelet. “Mikhail.”

Kirill crouched beside her. “We’ll find him. And Nora. Soon, they’ll be home with us.” The ‘where they belong’ remained unspoken. It didn’t matter that Mikhail was Alina’s son. Right now, he was a child in need of saving, and we were his best bet.

Anika opened the first journal, and I read the date over her shoulder. Three days after Mikhail’s birth. Alina’s handwriting slanted hard across the page, rushed enough that several words ran together.

‘I moved him before sunrise. No hospital photograph. No announcement. No one knows which name I used except the nurse, and she thinks I’m leaving the city.’

The later journals documented new apartments, new caregivers, and identities abandoned the moment an unfamiliar car appeared twice on the same street. Alina paid in cash, avoided cameras, and never stayed anywhere long enough to establish a routine Sokolov could follow. Every attempt bought a few weeks or months before his reach closed around them again.

By the third journal, fear had begun twisting her words, either in paranoia or something else. My chest squeezed at the thought that this could have been Anika. All it would have taken was for Alina to pull a switch and let Sokolov think Anika was Alina.

Anika pressed one fist against her mouth. I wanted to close the notebook, remove the fear from her hands, and tell Roman to summarize what mattered, but that would turn protection into another decision stolen from her, so I waited. As much as it pained me to let her hurt, I fisted my hands and used every ounce of my control to keep my mouth fucking shut.