27
YAROMIR
The next fewweeks pass without another open attack.
That doesn’t mean nothing happens.
Nothing is sometimes more dangerous than gunfire. It gives men time to plan, to talk, to weigh which side of a war looks safer. It gives my father room to pretend he hasn’t lost control. It gives Dmitri room to sober up and become stupid in more creative ways.
So I stay alert.
The estate changes around us. More men at the gates. New cameras on the eastern wall. Rotating guards at night. Deliveries checked twice before they’re allowed past the service entrance. Staff screened again, quietly enough that Anya doesn’t hear about most of it.
She notices anyway.
She notices everything.
On the third day after the warehouse attack, she stands at the library window and says, “There are more guards near the stables.”
I look up from my papers. “Yes.”
“Were you going to mention it?”
“No.”
She turns from the window. “You are very committed to being stubborn and brooding.”
“It has served me well.”
“It must be lonely.”
That shuts me up longer than I like.
She knows it too, because her mouth softens, and then she looks away before the moment becomes something either of us has to name.
I take my revenge for the warehouse quietly at first.
A man from Chernov’s side tries to leave the city through a private airstrip and doesn’t make the flight. The owner of the yard that provided the trucks signs over his river contracts before lunch and leaves town before dinner. The surviving shooter talks after Viktor spends twenty minutes alone with him, and by morning three names reach my desk.
I don’t touch any of it.
That would be crude.
I take what matters.
A dock supervisor who laughed at my offer in October now lowers his eyes in my office and signs without reading the second page.
My father understands the message. He sends one back.
A black wreath at the gate.
Anya sees it before anyone can remove it. She stands on the gravel path in a gray coat, staring at the flowers. For a second, she looks very young.
Then she turns to me. “That is from him?”
“Yes.”
“What does it mean?”
