Page 13 of Bratva Baby

I look down the alley. The pavement is wet from the squall, with puddles here and there, missing tiles, and broken lamps. No movement yet.

“Do you have a clean line?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll send Zhenya’s address. One message. One use. Delete it after you read it.”

The line dies and lights up again a moment later.

Per the address he sends, Zhenya Markina lives in a low house at the edge of Khimki, with lace curtains gone yellow at the edges and a kitchen that smells like boiled potatoes, black tea, and dill.

She opens the door, looks at me once, and steps aside. “Come in.”

I follow her into the kitchen. Heat rolls off the wood stove. Beetroot, browned meat, onion, hot oil, dill. It all hangs in the air.

Copper-bottomed pans sway above the stove. A pot of borscht sits warm on the stovetop.

“Sit,” Zhenya says.

I do. She sets out fried kotleti, black bread, pickled cucumbers, smetana, then pours black tea into a glass in a metal podstakannik and places it in front of me.

“Eat.”

While I do, she wipes her hands on a towel and talks. “Warehouse rents are worse. Customs drags unless the right palms are greased early.”

“You still run the business?” I ask.

“I still own the trawlers,” she says. “Not the routes. After Misha died, holding all of it together stopped being worth the trouble.”

That night she comes into my room with warm cherry kisel on a saucer, sets it on the bedside table, and sits beside me.

“Drink it,” she says. “You’ll sleep better.”

I take the glass. “Thank you.”

She gives me a hard look. “You came into my house with your eyes too wide and your mouth set like a trap. I know enough.”

I say, “Then tell me.”

So she does. A protected shipment vanished years ago. Leonidov and Reznikov both had reason to keep it stable. Then a Reznikov captain turned up dead. Then the intermediary sent to calm the dispute got killed too.

Zhenya looks at me and says, “Men call it honor because it sounds better. It was always money. It was always movement.”

I look down into the dark red kisel as dread squeezes my stomach tightly. Men will die, routes will seize up, and the whole machine will start coming apart.

Next morning, Zhenya puts a phone in my hand and tells me to call Yuri. Then she slips out of the kitchen, closing the door softly behind her.

Yuri picks up quickly.

“It’s me.”

“I figured,” he says. His voice sounds rougher than before. “Listen carefully. The house isn’t making noise, but it’s moving. There are more cars near the old warehouse roads. Drivers and house security are quietly asking whether anyone has seen you, always phrased as concern. Maks is pulling on the old lines without making a scene.”

Yuri tells me to leave the country for a while.

Prague is close, busy, and full of enough freight, money, and foreign traffic for me to disappear without dropping off the map.

I follow his instructions.