Page 62 of Bratva Baby

“Probably.”

I slide the phone back into my pocket and look at her properly. All that heat from thirty seconds ago is still there, but now it’s riding beside something harder. She knows it too. “Then we really are out of time,” she says.

“Yes.”

I step closer again, take her hand, and turn her toward the desk where the freight papers still sit open. “Start talking, Sofiya.”

This time, when she looks at me, there’s no flirtation, no argument, no stall, nothing except pure focus, and that scares me more than the meeting did.

19

SOFIYA

“Start talking, Sofiya.”

I stare at him for one beat too long, then cross to the desk and shove the freight papers aside until I’ve got enough room to think. My pulse is still too fast from the kiss, from the meeting he just walked out of, from the look on his face when he said Varga was gone. There is no clean lane between any of it now. Everything is piled together. Maks. Varga. Anton. The baby. The Brotherhood. Routes. Lies. Blood.

I brace both hands on the desk and force myself to choose one thread.

“If Varga’s moved, then Maks either found him or got close enough to make him run,” I say. “That means the old man mattered more than we hoped, or Maks wouldn’t have wasted time on him yet.”

Anton stands on the other side of the desk, jacket open, tie gone, shirt collar loose, dark hair slightly off from my hands and his own temper. He looks tired in the expensive male way that only makes him worse for me. “Useful. Keep going.”

I cut him a look. “Don’t sound so pleased with yourself.”

“I just dragged a plan out of a Brotherhood meeting and got kissed for my trouble. I’m taking what I can get.”

I ignore that and grab a pen. “Varga isn’t the only way in. He was the cleanest way. That’s different.”

His mouth shifts. “Now that sounds like you.”

I drag a notepad toward me and start writing. “Maks built the corridor on top of existing Leonidov structure. That means he didn’t create everything from scratch. He reused people, codes, shells, storage habits, and payments. Men like him always think that makes them clever. Mostly, it makes them traceable if you know where to look.”

Anton comes around the desk and leans one hip against it beside me. “Show me.”

I write three names first. “These are the outer companies my father distrusted on principle. They were much too tidy and quiet, and they always existed at one remove from the real movement. Two are probably dead paper now. One may still be live.”

He reads over my shoulder. “May?”

“Yes. That’s how life works when people are trying to kill you and bury the paperwork.”

His hand settles on the back of my chair, warm and distracting. I keep writing anyway.

“This one,” I say, tapping the second name, “handled refrigerated overflow through older Baltic channels. It used to be useful for goods like fish, dairy, preserved meat—anything that could hide inside volume and timing.”

I pause for a breath, feeling his hand trace a circle just under the back of my neck, and keep going. “If Maks revived it, then he didn’t do it because it was glamorous. He did it because old freight lines don’t get questioned if they still look boring.”

Anton nods once. “That matches what Varga gave me.”

I angle my head to look back at him. “How much did he actually give you?”

“Enough to confirm the structure, but not enough to hand me the whole thing tied with a ribbon.” He glances down at the page. “He was cautious.”

Yeah, that makes sense considering he’d have wanted to steer clear of landing in too much danger.

I exhale and write again. “If Varga’s gone now, then I’d bet Maks got wind that somebody was reaching. Which means we stop reaching like we’re looking for an old man and start reaching like we’re looking for movement.”

Anton watches my pen. “Meaning?”