Page 12 of Secret Baby of the Bratva
The rag slips in my hand, damp cloth streaking water across the counter. I toss it aside, grab my phone, and open my inbox like work can drown it out. A couple clients want updates on shipments. Dana’s already emailed the auction totals, a giddy subject line with more exclamation points than necessary.
My fingers type responses automatically, polite, efficient, professional. If anyone looked at me right now, they’d see a gallery assistant winding down after a long night. Nothing strange. Nothing suspicious.
My phone buzzes again, this time with a text from Mia:Takeout or you dead?
I don’t answer. She knows where I live, and ten minutes later she’s at my door, knocking in her usual rhythm.
When I let her in, she’s juggling a paper bag and two bottles of soda. Her blunt blonde bob is damp from the rain, cheeks pink from the wind. She dumps everything onto my coffee table and collapses on the couch like she owns it. “Tell me you’re starving.”
“I’m starving,” I echo, even though my stomach is in knots.
She grins, hands me a container of noodles, and digs into her own. We eat in the glow of my small lamp, steam curling from the cartons.
Mia launches into a story about her latest project, some client’s firewall that was child’s play to crack. She’s all spark and bravado, flicking her wrist like the code bent just because shetold it to. I nod, laugh in the right places, let her words wash over me.
Eventually, she shifts the conversation. “So. The big auction. How’d it go? You dazzle the old money crowd with your clipboard routine?”
I snort, forcing a laugh that feels brittle. “Same chaos as always. A caterer quit, half the flowers showed up late, but we pulled it off. Guests were happy, donors opened their wallets. The usual.”
“The usual,” she repeats, narrowing her eyes. “That’s yourI’m lying, but I don’t want you to knowvoice.”
“I’m not lying.” My chopsticks hover in midair. I make myself smile. “It was fine. Nothing exciting. I’m just tired.”
She studies me for a beat longer, but then her grin softens. “You need more fun in your life, Annie. You’re twenty-one, not sixty. One of these nights, I’m dragging you out. You’ll thank me when you meet someone who doesn’t know the difference between Monet and Manet and you realize that’s better for your sanity.”
“Sure,” I say, voice light. “One of these nights.”
She rolls her eyes but doesn’t press. We finish the food, cartons stacked neatly on the table. She hugs me before she leaves, the scent of her leather jacket sharp against my nose. “Sleep, okay? Don’t spend all night answering emails. I’ll know.”
When the door shuts, the silence caves in on me.
I lock it twice. Check the chain. Draw the curtains.
The apartment feels smaller than it did this morning, the shadows heavier. I tell myself I’m being ridiculous. There’s no reason anyone would care that I happened to be in the wrong hallway at the wrong time. No one even noticed me slip awayfrom the main hall. I’m a gallery assistant, not a threat. People like Dimitri Sharov don’t look at women like me twice.
Except he did.
The memory of his eyes finds me in the dark, sharp as glass. I sink onto the couch, arms wrapping around my middle. My pulse hasn’t settled since the gun went off.
I whisper it into the quiet, the lie I need to believe. “There’s no reason anyone would care.”
My hands won’t stop trembling.
***
Sleep doesn’t come easy. I toss under the thin blanket, thoughts scratching at me like restless birds. Every time I close my eyes, I see the same image: a man crumpling forward on concrete, the muzzle flash burning into my vision, Dimitri’s head snapping toward the door. I squeeze my eyes tighter, tell myself I imagined half of it, that my brain exaggerated the edges.
The sound of that shot—it doesn’t leave.
Eventually, exhaustion drags me under, but it’s a shallow kind of sleep, brittle and thin.
Something pulls me out of it.
At first, I tell myself it’s the storm. The wind has teeth tonight, scraping against the glass, and the pipes in this building like to groan when the temperature shifts. As I blink into the dark, the hair on my arms lifts. The noise is too clean. Too intentional. A faint scuff, a weight against the floorboards outside my door.
My hand flails for my phone on the nightstand, but I don’t make it.
The door bursts open in a violent crack of wood and metal.
