Mikhail says nothing.
That silence is answer enough.
I take one step closer. “Please.”
His face shifts then. Not much. Just enough to show that the word landed.
“He told me to keep you here,” he says.
“And if he’s bleeding out on some warehouse floor because he thought he could handle this alone?”
His jaw tightens.
I push harder because I know now that his loyalty to Roman is the only opening I have. “If something has happened to him andI’m still sitting in this apartment because you followed orders too well, are you going to live with that?”
That does it.
He looks away for half a second, then back at me.
“I hate this,” he mutters.
“So do I.”
He exhales, long and low, like a man giving in to a bad idea because the alternative feels worse. “Do you even know where you’re going?”
“No, but I’m going to figure it out,” I say, walking towards the door.
“Wait,” he says. “I saw the address on his phone.”
I turn to face him. “And what are you going to do about it?”
“Fine,” he says. “You stay behind me, you do exactly what I say, and if I tell you to get down, you get down before your body catches up to your brain.”
“Fine.”
His eyes flick to the gun in my hand. “Do you know how to use that?”
“Yes, but I haven’t used it in a while.”
“Wonderful,” he mutters.
He takes it from me, checks it with quick, practiced movements, then hands it back grip-first. “Keep your finger off the trigger unless you mean it.”
I nod once.
He grabs his coat, barks something into his phone, and within two minutes we’re in the car.
The ride there is worse than the waiting.
The city slips past in long industrial stretches, then emptier roads, then the kind of forgotten waterfront spaces where bad things can happen without anyone interrupting them out of principle.
Mikhail drives with one hand on the wheel and the other near his phone. He says very little. I don’t ask him for updates because his face tells me enough.
Nothing good.
When we finally pull up, the building looks almost dead.
A warehouse by the water, broad and low and mostly dark, with one security light buzzing near the side entrance and the wind dragging loose metal somewhere behind it. No movement outside. No visible cars. No sign of Roman’s men, which means they’re there and hidden or gone and I do not know which possibility I hate more.
