Page 9 of Secret Baby of the Bratva
The refusal is not loud. It is clear. She has courage, or she has the kind of stubbornness that gets mistaken for it until it breaks. My voice stays level.
“That isn’t the point.”
“I’m not a threat.”
Her choices are to beg or to argue. She chooses to argue. It fits what I have already seen of her.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I say.
“I work here.”
“Nothere.”
That lands where it should. The shape of her mouth shifts. She tries to hold my gaze and almost overdoes it, a common tell in people who want to appear strong.
She thinks if she keeps eye contact, she wins something. She does not, but she wins my attention in a way that has nothing to do with security reports.
“I was looking for a file,” she says.
“I heard you.” I tip my head toward the concrete. “You found something else.”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“Intentions don’t matter.”
It is not a line; it is a rule. I can see the truth of it work its way into her. She understands that policy and etiquette from the main hall stopped at the threshold of this door. She understands that everything she thought about her night ended with the sound of a gunshot.
“Someone will notice I’m gone if I don’t go back soon,” she says.
“They will notice you are busy,” I answer. “Busy is a story that satisfies most people.”
Her breath moves faster. Not frantic. Ready to break into something frantic if I ask for it. I step toward her without hurry. The corridor narrows around us; it is a trick of perspective and it is also control. Each pace I take reduces her options until the wall meets her spine and takes away one more. She keeps the clipboard where it is, as if paper can protect a person from facts.
I stop close enough to feel the heat off her skin. Her perfume is faint and clean, something that tries to erase sweat rather than announce itself. Her eyes are brown and full of calculation. People like to romanticize eyes when they tell a story later. These are not romantic. They are busy.
“What did you see?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
The tremor under the word betrays her. She tries to shape indignation around it, tries to give it a spine so I will believe she can still deny me. I keep my expression flat. I have heard lies in a thousand flavors. The voice betrays them more often than the face does. She swallows, tries again to build a story out of thin air and office supplies.
“I was only looking for a file,” she says. “There was noise in the hall. I checked the door. That’s all.”
“That,” I say, “is enough.”
The men at the end of the corridor step in by instinct when my shoulder shifts. I raise two fingers without looking at them, then lower my hand. The hallway seals behind her with their bodies.
One of them, Petr, moves close enough to pitch his voice low. “Do you want us to handle it?”
The words are clean and soft. The question is real. I don’t answer for one beat; I keep my eyes on hers and watch fear try to climb. It meets the stubbornness and loses ground. She is not naïve about what she has seen. She is not ready to surrender to it either. Interest pushes against caution in me. I silence it; I don’t reward interest when it costs this much.
“Not here,” I say without looking away from her. “Not now.”
Petr nods once and returns to his mark. The other man, Sergei, is new to this level of work. He stands too square, as if squaring up will make him heavier. I do not correct him aloud. His eyes jump to the camera and back to me. He is thinking about footage and timing. Good. He learns.
I lower my voice until it is almost kind. Kind is an illusion and a tool. “You open the door. You see a man kneeling. You hear a conversation that doesn’t belong to you. You hear the end. Tell me what you think that means.”
Color has drained from her mouth. The rest of her holds. “It means this is a wing I never want to visit again.”
