Page 107 of Bratva Baby

I look at Sofiya. “Poetic?”

She wipes at one eye with the heel of her hand and glares at me immediately for noticing.

I throw my hands up. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to be pleased.”

“I’m always pleased when your family chooses efficient symbolism.”

She gives me a look, then turns back to the phone. “Where is Maks now?”

Yuri’s voice loses the humor. “Alive. Locked. Grigor is keeping him that way until he finishes cutting every route clean. After that, I wouldn’t send flowers.”

That answer sits in the room. Sofiya lets out a breath and nods once, more to herself than to us. “Good.”

Good is a small word for it, but it’s the one that fits. Maks wanted to become a man history feared. Instead, he becomes an internal caution, the kind of name men stop saying because it costs too much to remember him.

The Brotherhood problem takes longer.

Maks knew too much about my meeting, too much about Sofiya’s pregnancy, and enough about my Khimki move to set men on the archive building before we touched the boxes. That kind of leak doesn’t come from a driver chatting in a yard. It comes from someone close enough to hear strategy and stupid enough to think cleverness protects him.

Sofiya finds the first thread.

She’s sitting in the library two weeks after the yard, feet propped on a chair, belly rounding under a dark dress, while Kolya reads out copies of intercepted messages and I try not to look at her legs.

“Read that line again,” she says.

Kolya looks up from the folder. “Which one?”

“The one about the child.”

He checks the page. “Blood can be acknowledged later. Protection can be extended later.”

Sofiya’s eyes move to mine.

I feel it at the same time she does.

Sergei.

In the Brotherhood meeting, Sergei was the one who said almost exactly that. Not the boss. Not Viktor. Not Mikhail. Sergei, with his neat hands and his patient little dislike of every choice I made.

Kolya sees my face and lowers the folder. “You know who said it.”

“Yes,” I say.

Sofiya reaches for a pencil and circles the line on her copy. “Maks didn’t only know you were sheltering me. He knew how the argument was being framed. That phrase didn’t come from an outside guard.”

Kolya looks at her for a second too long. She tilts her head. “What?”

“I’m trying to decide if pregnancy made you more frightening or if I just didn’t notice before.”

I stand and pick up my jacket. “You noticed.”

Sofiya smiles sweetly. “He ignored it because I’m pretty.”

Kolya points at her. “That’s exactly what happened.”

I look between them. “The two of you are becoming a problem.”