Page 77 of Marrying the Pakhan

I stand, needing to move, pacing the length of the study once, twice, trying to walk off something that pacing isn’t built to fix. The recording plays again in my head without my permission, the grandmother’s voice cracking with what almost sounds like grief, Pavel’s flat and certain underneath it, a man who’s already made his peace with whatever violence gets him what he wants.

“They actually believe this justifies it,” I say. “Grief. Bloodline. As if either of those excuses murdering a pregnant woman to get to a child who isn’t even legally theirs anymore.”

“Grief makes monsters out of people who’d otherwise never have become one. Doesn’t make them any less dangerous for the reason behind it.” Dimitri’s voice stays level, though I can hear the same fury underneath it that’s currently threatening to take mine apart entirely. “We don’t have the luxury of being surprised by this. We have the luxury of finally knowing exactly what we’re facing, which is more than we had yesterday.”

“A school function. Which one?”

“I’m working on it. Ginger’s new school has an open house scheduled for parents next week, first one since she enrolled. If that’s the window Pavel meant, it’s public, crowded, exactly the chaos that makes a direct move easier to execute and harder to trace back cleanly.”

“We cancel it. Pull her out entirely if we have to.”

“We could. Or we let them believe the window’s still open and control every variable inside it ourselves, instead of just removing the danger and letting them find a different one we don’t see coming.” Dimitri meets my eyes, steady, deliberate. “I’m not saying that lightly, Viktor. I’m saying it because reactive defense hasn’t worked so far. A car accident, a man at a fence, a stranger at a pickup line—we’ve been one step behind every single time. This might be our chance to be ahead of them instead.”

“And if we’re wrong? If they’ve got a second plan we haven’t found yet, and pulling her from the open house pushes them toward that instead?”

“Then we’re back to reacting, same as always. Which is exactly why I think controlling this window, rather than closing it, gives us better odds than either canceling the event or waiting for whatever they try next.”

I sit with that, the horror of the recording still sitting heavy in my chest, weighed against the cold logic of what Dimitri’s actually suggesting.

“You want to use the open house as a controlled encounter. Draw them into a situation where we hold every advantage instead of reacting to one they chose.”

“I want to end this, Viktor. Properly, permanently, before they get another attempt at either Harper or Ginger. If that means letting them believe an opportunity’s still available, so we can control exactly how it plays out, I think that’s worth considering.”

“Harper needs to know all of this. Tonight. Not a sanitized version.”

“I agree. She has a right to help decide this, especially if it involves Ginger being anywhere near a plan like this one.”

I think about Harper asleep upstairs right now, unaware that two people she once trusted with holidays and pierogi recipes have just been recorded discussing her as an acceptable loss. I think about the baby she’s carrying, dismissed in the same breath as something regrettable but ultimately unimportant.

“I’ll wake her,” I say. “She’ll want to hear this herself, not secondhand from me.”

“I’ll wait.”

I find Harper in bed, not fully asleep, and she sits up the moment she sees my face, already bracing for whatever I’m about to hand her.

“What happened?”

“Dimitri has something you need to hear. Tonight.” I sit on the edge of the bed, taking her hand before I say anything else. “It’s about Pavel. About what they’re actually planning, and why.”

“Tell me.”

So I do, as gently as the truth allows, watching her face go through exactly the horror I felt hearing it myself, watching her hand find her stomach instinctively the second I repeat the word Pavel used for her and the baby both.

“Expendable,” she repeats, voice hollow. “He called me expendable.”

“I know.”

“I sat at that man’s table. I ate his wife’s cooking. I let Ginger fall asleep in his lap more times than I can count.” Her voice shakes, fury and grief tangling together the same way mine did downstairs. “And this whole time he was capable of this. Of calling me a variable he can afford to lose.”

“I know, Harper. I heard it myself an hour ago, and I still can’t fully sit with it.”

“And you’re telling me this because.”

“Because we have a chance to end this instead of just surviving the next attempt. But it’s not my decision to make alone anymore. Not after everything I’ve already taken from you by deciding things without you.” I hold her gaze, steady despite everything currently sitting in my chest. “Dimitri thinks we can use their own plan against them. I need you to help me decide if that’s a risk worth taking, with everything currently at stake.”

Harper’s quiet for a long moment, and I watch her arrive at the same cold calculation Dimitri and I already have, weighing horror against the strategic reality underneath it.

“Tell me the whole plan,” she says finally.