Page 83 of Marrying the Pakhan

“Enough.” He doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t push, some instinct telling me neither of us is ready for the full account tonight, maybe not for a long while yet. “I’d do it again. Every single time, without hesitation, if it meant bringing her home to you.”

I believe him completely, and that belief sits strangely alongside everything else I’m feeling right now, gratitude and horror and love all tangled together in a way I don’t have a clean name for.

“Come here,” I say instead of responding directly, and he crosses the distance, kneeling down in front of both of us, and I reach out with my free hand and pull him into the same embrace I’m holding Ginger in, all three of us tangled together on the front steps of a house that nearly cost us everything tonight.

“Thank you,” I whisper against his shoulder. “Thank you for bringing her back to me.”

“Always.” His voice breaks slightly on the word. “I told her that tonight, and I meant it for both of you. Always.”

We stay like that a long while, none of us willing to be the first to pull away, Ginger finally fully asleep between us, Dimitri and the security team giving us the space to simply exist in this moment before the practical realities of tonight inevitably catch up with all of us.

Eventually Viktor carries Ginger inside himself, refusing to hand her off even to me, and I follow behind them both, taking in the visible aftermath of tonight’s violence with fresh eyes now that the immediate terror has finally started to recede.

There’s so much I don’t know yet about what happened after Dimitri sent me down to that safe room.

So much I suspect I’m not going to fully understand even once Viktor eventually tells me the rest of it.

41

VIKTOR

Dimitri finds me in the study three days after the hangar, tablet in hand, expression sharper than I’ve seen from him since the night Ginger was taken.

“He’s making a move himself this time,” he says. “No more sending men to do it for him. Our informant says Pavel’s been agitated since the plane failed, erratic in a way she’s never seen from him before. He’s planning something personal now, something he intends to do with his own hands.”

“Where?”

“An old property he still owns under a shell name, half an hour outside the city. She overheard him telling the grandmother he needed to finish this properly, that sending others has only proven he’s lost control of his own operation.”

I sit with that, a cold clarity settling over the fury I’ve been carrying since that night. “He’s coming for one of us directly. Me, most likely, given everything else has failed.”

“That’s my read too.” Dimitri sets the tablet down. “Which gives us something we haven’t had this entire war. Advance knowledge of exactly where he’ll be, and exactly when.”

“I want him alive.” The words surprise me even as I say them, though the reasoning behind them settles quickly once spoken aloud. “Killing him ends the immediate threat. It doesn’t end the questions. Who funded him all these years. What he actually did during the time everyone believed him dead. Whether there’s anyone else out there still loyal to him who might pick up exactly where he leaves off.”

“You want to interrogate him.”

“I want him to answer for eleven years, properly, to people who have more reason to want those answers than we do.”

Dimitri studies me for a long moment, understanding arriving slowly. “Volkov.”

“Volkov,” I agree. “Pavel used his resources to disappear after the warehouse. Money, safe houses, false identities, all of it borrowed against promises he apparently never intended to keep. Volkov’s been hunting a ghost for eleven years without knowing the ghost was hiding in plain sight as a grieving grandfather.”

“That’s a significant favor to call in, Viktor. Volkov doesn’t forget debts, and he definitely won’t forget this one.”

“I’m aware of the cost. I’m also aware Pavel tried to kill my daughter twice and called my pregnant wife an acceptable loss. I’ll pay whatever debt this creates.”

I make the call myself, and Volkov’s voice on the other end of the line carries the particular stillness of a man who’s been waiting a long time for exactly this information.

“You’re certain,” he says, once I’ve laid out everything Dimitri’s informant confirmed. “Certain enough to stake your own operation’s credibility on it.”

“I watched his face in a courtroom months ago and knew him instantly, eleven years of presumed death notwithstanding. I’m certain.”

“Then we have business to discuss.” Something that might be satisfaction colors his voice, cold and patient. “I’ll bring my own people. This isn’t a favor I’ll be doing quietly, Markov. I want him to see exactly who’s finally caught up to him.”

“Understood.”

We move two days later, converging on the property from separate directions, Volkov’s men and mine coordinating through Dimitri’s careful planning, everyone in position before the sun’s fully down.