Page 87 of Bratva Baby

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SOFIYA

After a minute, I continue speaking.

“The drive was never the whole thing,” I say. “You knew that, or you wouldn’t have chased me this hard. You knew I copied something, but what scared you was the chance that he had already built the full reconciliation before he died.”

His voice comes back softer. “What reconciliation?”

“The one that connects the old route structure, the intermediary payment trail, the reopened codes, the vendor approvals, and the side accounts you used to build your private corridor.”

Nothing.

I keep going.

“You searched the obvious files after he died. You searched the servers, the apartment, maybe even my old things. You went after Varga because you thought he might hold the missing paper, and now you’re moving his boxes at midnight because he did.”

“You’re guessing.”

“I’m reading you.” My fingers close around the edge of the desk. “You can live with Anton having a few records. You can talk around those if you have enough time and enough frightened men. What you can’t live with is my father’s final index showing intent. Not movement. Not error. Intent.”

Maks breathes once through his nose.

“You always were good with words,” he says, but his voice has lost its ease.

“No. I’m good with structures. Words are what men use when the structure is already bad.”

Niko stands near the door, listening with a face that has gone very still. I can feel him wanting to interrupt, but he doesn’t. Smart man.

Maks speaks again, and now there is no warmth left. “Where is it?”

I let my gaze land on the number I wrote in the margin, then on the old company list beside it. “The Yantar clock.”

For a few seconds, I hear nothing at all.

Then Maks laughs once, and it sounds deliciously thin.

“You expect me to believe your father hid a full reconciliation package inside an old clock?”

“I expect you to remember how much he hated that clock,” I say. “He hated it because everyone trusted it. Men sat under it and lied while it kept ticking over their heads. He told me once the room trusted the clock more than the men in it.”

“That means nothing.”

“It meant nothing to me too.” I make my voice lower, and I hate how easy the lie gets once it has my father wrapped around it. “Until I opened the casing.”

His breath changes.

There’s the hook under his ribs.

“What did you find?” he asks.

“An index. Copies. A second storage trail. Enough to show that the intermediary case was never dead, and enough to prove you built the new corridor with old family structure because you wanted the old blood available when you needed cover.”

He swears under his breath. One word, almost lost.

I close my eyes for one second because relief hits so hard, it nearly ruins me. He believes enough. Not all of it. Not fully. But enough to make him afraid, and fear is the only leash men like him respect.

“You’re lying,” he says.