Page 12 of Tattooed Heart

I head straight for the wall cabinet Nick described. It’s locked, but that doesn’t last. I slide the small silver key into place, turn it with a quiet click, and open the panel.

My breath catches. Files. Dozens of them. Neatly organized, labeled with precision, each stamped with dates hinting at something far more calculated than coincidence. I don’t have time to review them all, so I grab the ones marked with red tabs. My hands tremble as I flip through pages of names, transaction logs, call transcripts, and even printed emails annotated with a neat, vicious scrawl.

One name keeps surfacing. Detective Louis Russo.

At first, I think it’s a coincidence. But then I see it again. And again. It’s folded into reports about seized shipments that mysteriously vanished, testimonies that changed mid-trial, and a case dismissed because “the officer failed to appear.”

Money moves through these pages like blood through veins. It isn’t just bribes. It’s laundered cash. Wire transfers are routed through shell charities and front companies, all of which bear Petrov’s signature at the bottom. And Russo? He isn’t a pawn. He’s Petrov’s partner.

This is it, I think, snapping photos as fast as my phone can handle.This is leverage.

I don’t hear Marina come back in. I only feel the air shift before her voice slices through the silence.

“Five minutes.”

I nod, already moving, restoring every file to its place like I was never there. “You said he keeps digital backups. Where?”

She pauses, then whispers, “Encrypted drive built into his desk. You need fingerprint access. You won’t crack it.”

I don’t waste time trying. I have enough to light a fuse, but Petrov won’t see the explosion coming.

We move fast on the way down. No words are exchanged, just the tense rhythm of two women bound by necessity and mutual risk. At the service exit, Marina pauses.

“If he finds out,” she warns, “he won’t just kill you. He’ll destroy everything you love.”

“He can try,” I hiss. “But he’s not the only one with sharp teeth.”

When I return, Lev is in the estate kitchen, hunched over a tablet with three phones scattered around him. He looks like a soldier who never came off the battlefield. He doesn’t glance up as I walk in.

“You need to take a look at this,” I state, tossing my phone onto the counter in front of him.

Lev picks it up, brows lifting slightly as he scrolls through the images. “Petrov’s files?”

“Mostly payment logs and police transcripts. There’s a name that keeps coming up. Detective Louis Russo.”

That gets his attention. He taps through a few photos, zooms in on the signature, then looks at me. “You’re sure this is legit?”

“They were in his locked office files. They have to be legit.”

Lev’s jaw tightens, and a muscle ticks beneath the shadow of his stubble. “Where’d you get these?”

Lev’s stare pins me in place, sharp enough to cut glass. I clear my throat, but he doesn’t push it.

“Russo’s been a thorn in our side for years,” he mutters. “Corrupt to the core, but it’s more than that. He’s got a personal vendetta against Aleksandr. Always finding ways to interfere, sabotage deals, stir up heat where there shouldn’t be any. But if we can tie him directly to Petrov… and to Morozov—” He lets the rest hang, the promise of retribution thick in the silence that follows.

“We use it,” I finish. “We turn his own man against him.”

Lev looks at me momentarily, not with pity or disapproval but with something close to respect.

“I’ll dig,” he finally says. “But quietly. If we go too loud too fast, Petrov will burn it all down before we can nail him.”

“I know.” I grab one of the mugs sitting near the edge of the counter, fill it with coffee, and take a sip.

Lev doesn’t say a word. He just sits there watching me. And somehow, the silence between us says more than any accusation ever can. “Dimitri wouldn’t want you taking this kind of risk.”

I meet his stare without flinching. “Too late for that.”

His eyes narrow. “You care about him.”

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