ANA
Saint Petersburg doesn’t welcome you back. It waits to see if you’ll make yourself known.
I step into it without hesitation, not out of courage, but because weakness costs more than caution, and I’ve paid that price before. The city isn’t mine anymore, not in any sentimental way. That helps. Familiar streets make people careless. That distance keeps me from mistaking familiarity for safety.
After Mila and Irina leave, Dominik clears the table and spreads out a map of the city. He marks streets, access points, buildings that matter. I stand beside him and watch how he thinks through it.
He draws exits fast. When he circles a building, he slows down.
“That place will have private security,” I say. “Not uniforms. Guys who know the building. Same faces every day.”
He nods. “Two inside. One near the loading dock. One near the main door.”
“And outside,” I say. “Cars that sit too long at the curb. Boats that drift slower than they should. Delivery vans that don’t unload anything.”
He marks a few more spots. “We’ll watch the street before we go in.”
“They’ll try to rush you,” I say. “Call you in early. Say something changed.”
“I won’t move just because they say so.”
“They’ll try to make it feel urgent.”
He glances at me. “I won’t bite.”
“If that doesn’t work, they’ll send someone you know.”
“To push.”
“To get a reaction. From you or from me.”
His eyes settle on mine. “They won’t get one.”
“They don’t need much,” I say. “Just enough to throw off timing.”
He doesn’t argue. He adjusts a route and writes a time next to it. We go over it again. Entry, exit, backup car, who calls who if something shifts. By the time we finish, the sky is turning gray.
I look out the window at the street below. In a few hours, we walk into a room full of people who don’t want us there.
I’m not thinking about the meeting.
I’m thinking about Mila. We need to walk out of that building with nothing changed.
That’s what has to hold.
By nine, we’re in the car and heading toward the meeting.
I don’t bring up the cover story while we’re standing at the door. I wait until we’re driving and there’s no reason to turn around. He keeps his eyes on the road.
“What’s our cover?” I ask.
He lets a bus pull ahead of us, eases off the accelerator, then speaks like he’s stating a fact, not introducing a role.
“My name is Nikolai Sokolov,” he says. “I work in security. Hospitals, clinics, places that don’t shut down.”
I watch his hands on the wheel, steady, familiar because they don’t change when things tighten.
“What does that mean when someone asks?” I say.
