Page 46 of Marrying the Pakhan

“Dark jacket. Mid-thirties, maybe. I didn’t get a great look… I was just driving past.”

“Did he approach anyone? Say anything?”

“No, he just watched. Why?” The sharpness in his voice is enough to make my own chest tighten. “Viktor, you’re scaring me a little.”

“I’m sorry.” He exhales, visibly working to soften his own reaction. “It’s probably nothing. Schools attract strange loiterers for all sorts of harmless reasons: delivery drivers on break, a relative running late, someone waiting on a ride share.”

“You don’t actually believe that, based on your face right now.”

“I don’t know what to believe yet. That’s the honest answer.” He rubs a hand over his jaw, and for a second his composure slips enough that I see real worry underneath it. “That’s why I need to look into it before I say anything more.”

“That’s not actually reassuring.”

“I know.” He rests a hand on the car door, jaw tight in the way I’ve learned means he’s holding something back. “I’ll have someone look into it. Just to be safe.”

“Look into it how? Viktor, what aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing you need to worry about tonight.” He kisses my forehead gently, a clear attempt to close the conversation rather than continue it. “I promise, the second there’s something real to tell you, I will.”

I want to push harder. I’ve wanted to push harder every single time he’s done this: the courthouse, the car outside the house I only half noticed last week, this. But I also know by now that pushing doesn’t get me anywhere faster, just gets me a longer wait for the same eventual non-answer.

“Okay,” I say instead, though it isn’t, not really. “Seven o’clock. Don’t be late.”

“I won’t be.”

I pick Ginger up from Marisol’s on the way home, and she climbs in already talking, something about a puzzle she and Marisol finished, all one hundred and fifty pieces, and how Marisol let her have popcorn for a snack even though it was almost dinner time.

“That’s a lot of pieces,” I say.

“It took forever. Can we do a smaller one tonight?”

“We’ll see.”

She keeps talking, and I let her, grateful for the noise.

21

VIKTOR

Dimitri sends the photo without a text first, which tells me everything before I even open it.

The man from Ginger’s school, caught on a long lens getting into a gray sedan two streets over from where our own watcher had eyes on it. Same plate. Same shell company registration that dissolved on paper eight months ago and never actually stopped operating.

I stare at the photograph longer than I need to, at a stranger’s face now confirmed as a real, active threat instead of a possibility I could still talk myself out of believing.

There’s a stillness to the way he stands in the photograph, patient, unbothered, a man who’s clearly done this before and expects to do it again without consequence. I recognize that stillness. I’ve built a career on men who move exactly like that.

I call Dimitri the second I’ve confirmed it myself.

“It’s him,” I say. “The same man.”

“Confirmed on our end too. I had someone cross-reference the plate against every vehicle registered to that shell company, going back as far as the filings let us look.” Dimitri’s voice has an edge to it I don’t hear often. “Viktor, you need to see what else came back.”

“Tell me.”

“Not over the phone. This needs the actual paperwork in front of you.”

“Then come to the house. I don’t want to wait for this.”