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The cold reaches through my coat when the doors open, but the taxi is already turning into the hospital drive. I don’t need Alexei to thank me, and I don’t need to know whether he remembers the gala, the hotel, or the woman who left before morning because emergency surgery called her back to work.

I only need to reach Misha before he notices how late I am.

Rain streaks the taxi windows, smearing Moscow into gray glass and brake lights. I give the driver my address, then check my phone. Two blocked calls sit beneath a voicemail notification. There’s nothing from Galina, which means Misha is safe and probably refusing to sleep because he can sense the exact moment I’m least equipped to negotiate.

The first call came twenty-three minutes ago. The second followed seven minutes later.

I play the voicemail.

Silence. No breathing, traffic, or rustle of clothing. The line remains open for eleven seconds before disconnecting.

“Spam,” I mutter.

The driver glances at me in the mirror. “Aggressive spam?”

“Is there another kind?”

A black sedan turns behind us at the next intersection. It follows through two lights, close enough that I can’t see its front plate. Moscow contains thousands of black sedans, most driven by men who consider lane markings personal insults, but I keep watching it in the side mirror.

It follows us through the next turn, and my pulse begins to climb.

“Circle the block before you stop,” I tell the driver.

He looks at me but does it, either because I’m paying him or because I sound like a woman who won’t explain herself politely.

The sedan continues straight.

Outside my building, a man smokes beneath a no-smoking sign. He wears a dark cap and keeps one hand inside his jacket. As we pass, his attention stays on the entrance.

A car traveling in the same direction. A man smoking where he shouldn’t. Two blocked calls that could belong to any call center in Russia.

None of it proves anything, but I file away every detail.

“Turn the corner and stop halfway down,” I say.

The driver obeys. I walk back beneath my umbrella, keeping the smoker at the edge of my vision. He doesn’t move.

Inside the locked vestibule, I wait and listen.

No footsteps follow.

I take the stairs instead of the elevator, pausing at each landing. By the third floor, irritation has replaced most of my nerves. I’ve turned an ordinary trip home into a tactical exercise because of a sedan, a smoker, two silent calls, and one Volkov man recovering in intensive care.

The stairwell door opens below me.

I keep climbing without speeding up. A woman appears with bags hanging from both hands, arguing into her phone about cabbage prices. She passes without looking at me.

I almost laugh, but I’m tired.

Galina opens my apartment door before I can use my key. She’s sixty-eight, built like a sturdy cupboard, and offended by most modern parenting choices.

“You’re late,” she says.

“I was at work.”

“Work has clocks.”

“Can I come in?”