My eyes narrow. She’s near a Bank Saint Petersburg branch on Nevsky Prospekt. Markov’s old money sat there. Not operating cash or street flow but the deep reserves. The kind you park under shell names and foreign paperwork and forget until war forces your hand. I know exactly how loud it is if someone touches it.
If Ana is touching that money, it’s an emergency. That kind of money doesn’t move quietly. Especially not after I tied a tripwireto it when she ran. I knew the containment tier would light up the second it shifted. I knew it could pull eyes I didn’t want. But it was the only way to trace her.
Now the alert is live. And she’s fucking twenty minutes away.
I push the pedal harder and start counting backward, measuring what I have against what they did six years ago, knowing they won’t allow the same outcome twice. Ana won’t slip out of their hands this time. The stakes are higher now because she has a child. If they reach her before I do, I lose her for good.
I check my watch. Twelve minutes to Sector B if traffic holds, five more before someone gets eyes on her, and no more than thirty seconds after that before they take her and the kid, and there’s nothing left for me to fix.
By the time I hit the parking structure, I’ve shaved it down to ten. I ease through the rows of parked vehicles. Concrete pillars loom under fluorescent glare. Oil and tire marks smear the ramp as I spiral upward, but there’s no sign of a struggle, noise, or movement. A part of me wonders if it’s already over, but that would’ve triggered another coded message confirming Ana and the kid were secure, and nothing like that has come through.
I lower the window and listen, straining for anything out of place. At level three, I spot an empty space and slide the car in and cut the engine before the sound can carry. I send Denis a quick text, telling him to bring his Lada and hold near Sector B.
I check my gear, the gun, the knife strapped tight at my ankle, and take the stairs. I climb two at a time and keep to the edge where the sound dulls. Footsteps scrape above me, clipped and hurried. I tighten my grip on the gun and move silently.
Then I hear a child’s scream cut through everything else, and I take the remaining steps to level four at a run. As I clear the pillar, I see three men, Bratva recovery crew without question, and I know them by the posture, the spacing they keep, and the way they adjust without speaking. The gloves, the jackets with no insignia, are standard issue, all part of the operation.
One already has his gun out. Another keeps his hand close, pretending he isn’t a threat. The third is trying to box a woman in against a black SUV with the engine running.
I’d recognize Ana a mile away, those curves, the long, sinewy back, the soft reach of her neck. She has her back to me, her thick hair twisted into a braid. She’s clutching a child tight to her chest, a little girl with a mass of dark hair falling into her face. She’s maybe four or five, her hands fisted in Ana’s sweater, her face pressed hard into her shoulder.
One of the men reaches for the child.
Ana’s knee comes up fast and clean, and from the noise it makes, she has hit bone. The man folds with a sound that’s more breath than pain. She pivots immediately, elbow snapping up into the second man’s throat. He chokes and stumbles back, dropping his grip on the car. The child clings to her all the while.
Her assailant recovers first and brings his gun up, the muzzle pressing against Ana’s head. The child buries her face deeper into Ana’s shoulder. The man grins and flicks off the safety. He opens his mouth to speak when I shoot him high in the chest. His knees buckle, and the gun skids across the concrete. I step out into the open and kick it aside, sending it down the ramp.
Ana turns at the sound and her eyes lock on mine. Years of oblivion dissolve in a heartbeat as recognition hits herhard. A hundred emotions cross her face—disbelief, anger, and something else I can’t quite place.
“Dominik,” she says. My name sounds like a bitter pill in her mouth, hard for her to swallow.
The operation was meant to stay controlled, and the crew wasn’t expecting anyone to move for Ana. The man with the ruined throat dives behind a pillar and fires blindly in my direction. The third lunges for the SUV, yanking the rear door open and trying to haul Ana and the child inside.
I slide past the next pillar, keep my grip steady, and line up the shot. One round takes the driver. His head snaps back and his body folds sideways, blood spattering the window. The man hauling at Ana screams and lets go of her as I fire again, the shot catching him square in the back and dropping him hard, his body going slack as he collapses near the ramp.
The last one tries to crawl. I put a bullet through the back of his head and finish it.
For a moment, nothing moves except the idling engine. Ana stays where she is, frozen in place, the child still locked against her chest.
I step forward and keep my voice even. “Let’s move.”
She finally reacts. “You shouldn’t be here,” she snaps.
“Neither should you.” My gaze drops to the blade in her hand, streaked with blood and still wet. She must have caught the man she drove her knee into. Good.
She doesn’t lower it. I reach out and press her hand down anyway, gentle but unyielding, guiding it to her side. Her eyes flick to the child, then back to me.
“The alert went to you,” she says. Her chin lifts a fraction, like she’s bracing for me to lie.
I nod. “What were you thinking, that I’d burn the rest of my past to keep you safe?”
“That I could handle it,” she says, flat and unapologetic.
“You couldn’t.” Irritation slips into my voice before I can stop it. Did she think staying separate would keep us harder to track by the Bratva? If that was the plan, it failed.
I take a step toward her, then stop. “Can I see her?”
Ana shifts just enough. The girl’s face turns, her arms locked around Ana’s neck, eyes wide and fixed on me. She isn’t tear-streaked. Instead, her gaze is curious, watching me from beneath thick lashes.
