Page 9 of Bratva Baby

“We are accountants,” I snap. “That’s what keeps the dirt buried.”

His mouth shifts. “Paper only matters if men are still willing to enforce it.”

“Maks.” My shoulders slump. “This isn’t about profit. You have to see that, right?”

He says nothing. “You’re doing this on purpose,” I mutter, almost to myself. “You’re building pressure.”

“Pressure reveals who matters.”

“And who dies?”

He takes a sip. “Sometimes.”

Then he comes around the desk and stops close enough that I can smell the whiskey. “Did you copy anything?”

“No.”

His eyes drop, just once, to my sleeve. My whole body goes still, but he never touches me or calls for a female guard to search me. He just looks at me for a long moment and lets the silence sit there until my skin feels too thin. Then he steps back.

He slides into his jacket, eyes still on me. “If you found anything, the smart choice would be to forget it.”

I bristle immediately. “I don’t take advice from men burying freight money in dead case files.”

His face sharpens. “Stubborn as always. You push at the wrong moment.”

“I push when no one else will.”

“And look where that got your father.” He comes close enough to wake the monitor with two fingers against the keyboard. “Sometimes, people mistake access for safety,” he says. “Did you inherit all of his habits? Including the fatal one of thinking knowledge makes a person valuable?”

My pulse pounds, but my mind is already working. Door. Camera. Distance. The drive hidden in my sleeve.

At last he steps aside. “Go back to the party.”

I have no misconceptions about this.

He’s letting me walk because killing me here would be messy, and because he still doesn’t know what I copied or who I told. He’s chosen surveillance over force.

I smooth my dress, rebuild my face, and go back to the party. No one stops me. The quartet still plays.

My aunt gives me a quick look and I answer it with a smile. Anton is gone. Maks comes back later, and anyone watching would think nothing happened.

I stay long enough not to look frightened, then leave. In the car, I check my sleeve. The drive is still there.

By the time I get home, I understand that Maks let me walk because I’m being watched.

My apartment is on the fourth floor of a building that the family still controls through one of its outer companies. I used to resent that arrangement.

The apartment was mine to live in, but the control over it still belonged to the family. I had space, privacy, and a front door of my own, yet the reach of Leonidov money was still built into the walls.

Tonight, I’m grateful for it. Then the thought turns sour, because protection tied to family money only holds as long as the family still wants me protected.

Once I get inside, I kick my shoes off and lock the door, cross straight to the kitchen, and pull the drive from my sleeve.

I stand under the pendant light in my formal dress and bare feet and stare at it.

What now? Call someone? Who?

There is no one obvious. That’s the first ugly truth. The people who used to belong to my father belong to the structure now, or to Grigor. Men I once trusted drive Leonidov cars. Women who hugged me at the funeral attend dinners where Maks sits closer to the head of the table every month.