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My stomach pulls tight. I’ve read reports like this and sat through morbidity-and-mortality meetings where doctors discussed deaths, mistakes, and causes until every life became a case number.

Not Marina.

I press my nails into my palm and look at Abramov.

“Tell me,” Alexei says, motioning him toward the chair. His eyes flick to me before returning to Abramov.

Abramov remains standing and opens the report on his tablet. “Our contact at the city medical examiner’s office sent this before it reached the police file.”

“What did they find?”

“The preliminary screen found a sedative and an opioid in Marina’s blood. There were two injection marks.”

“Where?” I ask.

“One on the outside of her upper arm and another near her hip.”

I look at the report. “She wouldn’t have stood still for either. Marina was a regional sambo champion.”

Alexei studies the reports. “One man wouldn’t have taken her down cleanly.”

“The bruising suggests more than one.” Abramov points to the report. “The first injection may have been forced during a struggle or given before she understood what was happening.”

“That would be the sedative,” I say.

Alexei observes me for a full second, then nods. “Once the sedative took effect, even a sambo champion couldn’t keep fighting.”

“The opioid followed once she was down,” Alexei continues. “The dose was high enough to stop her breathing.”

“My contact says the second injection killed her. Full toxicology is still pending,” Abramov says.

I stare at the photograph on his screen.

“Could she have done it herself?” I grip the edge of the table. Doctors learn to consider every possibility, even the ones they hate.

“No.” Alexei enlarges the image. “The angle is wrong, and there’s bruising around her wrist.”

“She scratched whoever held her,” Abramov adds. “They found skin beneath one fingernail.”

“Do we have a match?” Alexei reaches for the tablet.

“Not yet.” Abramov hands it over. “They’re comparing the sample against our records and the men taken from Vera’s building.”

I look at Marina’s hand in the photograph and remember every heartfelt act of support, every extension of friendship and camaraderie she offered without being asked.

“What about my apartment?” I ask, desperate to turn away from Marina, though the next answer promises no mercy.

“The fire started just inside the broken window, then spread across the room and into the hall,” Abramov says. “The accelerant was a commercial solvent used in freight depots.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “The fire spread before our men could stop it. They wanted to destroy whatever you’d left inside.”

Images fill the screen. The drawers hang crooked from scorched frames, the cupboard doors are split and blackened, and wet ash covers the floor.

“My photographs?” I move to the edge of the chair.

Abramov pauses. “The fire reached them.”

Nausea rises into my throat.