Page 12 of Bratva's Secret Girl
“And when would you expect to see her next?”
“This evening,” she says uncertainly. “She’s always good about checking in because?—”
“So she’s missing in the same way my wife is lost in a bookshop when I’m carrying the baby?” Richmond says from behind me and his disrespect makes me see red.
“This isn’t an interrogation,” I snarl, hovering my hand protectively at Hayley’s back.
“Have you tried…” Artem waves his hand vaguely. “Tok snapping her?”
Lina rolls her eyes at her husband. “He means have you?—”
But just then, a man bursts into our meeting room, green eyes blazing.
“I came as soon as I could,” Dimitri, the Bratva kingpin of Rotherhithe, puffs. “I can’t believe they took a baby!”
“No,” I try to interject.
“Are you the parents?” He gestures between Hayley and me.
“No!” Hayley flushes the colour of a tomato.
“Oh.” He pauses. “Adopting is still parenting, you know. My rescue dog?—”
My heart twists. “We’re not together.”
“And it’s my sister,” Hayley says.
His brows shoot up. “Big gap between children, your parents?—”
“She’s not a baby, oh my god, could you stop trying to save everyone, Dimitri?” Lina says, her tone laced with amusement at her husband’s friend.
Dimitri rounds on me. “You said a baby! Malishka. Look.”
He grabs his phone from his pocket, and taps at it. “Little sister baby girl is missing, urgent,” he reads.
And finally, I understand what happened. My hand goes to the back of my neck to massage the strain out.
Fuck. How am I going to explain this?
“The text to speech,” Mayfair says in Russian, a second after I realise.
“It uses AI, and it’s not very fucking intelligent.” In fact, it has caused quite an awkward situation, as it has missed a couple of the words I said, “helpfully” translated one, and mushed them all together into an AI equivalent of the Russian meatloaf I had as a child.
Except, kotlety is more edible than this disaster.
“Malishka,” says Mayfair, glancing at his wife, Lina, who smiles back.
“She’s malishka.” I point at Hayley, who looks faintly alarmed.
“Malishka?” she repeats.
I said that the little sister of my baby girl—as in my love—was missing, and AI wrote it up as the stupidest possible interpretation.
Dimitri flicks his gaze between Hayley and me and there’s dawning realisation on his face.
“There was an AI translation mistake, it seems,” Mayfair says with a smirk.
“AI hallucinated the baby bit?” Hayley asks.
