Page 85 of Bratva Baby

“That sounds exactly like something he’d say.”

“Then listen like he would.” I grab a pen and circle the archive building on the map. “Don’t push the front. Don’t chase the first open gap. If they wanted the records gone, the truck would already be burning. If they wanted Anton dead, they wouldn’t have waited until after he opened the boxes. They’re holding you there because someone wants terms.”

Kolya gives a short, ugly laugh. “You’re telling me Maks wants to negotiate?”

“No,” I say, and my stomach pulls tight because the answer is worse. “I’m telling you he wants me.”

The library door opens while I’m still on the call. One of Anton’s guards steps in, pale around the mouth, one hand pressed to his earpiece as if the whole house has started speaking at once. He looks from me to the papers, then to the phone, and I can see the decision forming in his face before he makes it.

He’s going to manage me.

I point at him before he gets a word out. “Don’t.”

The guard stops.

Kolya hears enough to ask, “Who’s with you?”

“Someone about to be useful,” I say. “Stay down, keep Anton behind cover even if you have to insult his pride, and don’t let anyone split those boxes.”

“He’s not going to like any part of this.”

“Anton dislikes many things and survives most of them. Keep him alive long enough to complain.”

I hang up before Kolya can argue and turn fully to the guard. His name is Niko, I think, though Anton has too many men around this penthouse and they all stand like doors until someone gives them a reason to move.

“Get me Zhenya’s line on the monitored phone,” I say.

His brows pull in. “Mr. Reznikov ordered you to stay here and wait for updates.”

“Mr. Reznikov is bleeding behind a concrete wall because he followed my freight read and found the records Maks is trying to move.” I step around the desk, and every word gets calmer as I walk toward him. “So now you can either help me get him out of that yard, or you can explain to him later that you protected his rules while his blood was running into his shirt.”

Niko’s mouth tightens. He’s not stupid. He touches his earpiece and speaks quickly to someone in the hall while I pick up the monitored phone and dial Zhenya from memory. The call connects on the third ring.

“Sofiya?” she says, and the way she says my name tells me she already knows something has broken.

“I need Maks’s direct number.”

“No.”

“Zhenya.”

“No,” she repeats, harder this time. “There are bad ideas, and then there’s walking into a room after setting your dress on fire. This is the second one.”

“Anton’s hit. Kolya’s pinned near the archive building. Maks’s men are holding instead of finishing, which means they want something.”

Zhenya goes quiet. I hear a chair scrape on her end, then a drawer opening. “You’re going to call him.”

“Yes.”

“And say what?”

I look at the old notes spread across the desk, at my father’s handwriting copied from memory, at the cold route names and the company markers that started all of this. “I’m going to tell him what he’s always been afraid my father left behind.”

Zhenya exhales slowly. “Did he?”

My hand stills on the desk.

No. My father left me training, warnings, half-remembered names, and enough fear dressed up as practical lessons to keep me moving when any normal woman would’ve collapsed. He didn’t leave me a perfect weapon in a clock, a box, or some fairy-tale hiding place.