Page 157 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

Elena takes Cara from me with one arm around her shoulders, and Lidiya walks on her other side. I watch them cross the foyer and start up the stairs, with one guard ahead of them and one behind.

When Cara reaches the landing, I turn toward the lower level.

Morozov is taken below the main floor to the secure holding chamber. The chamber has concrete walls, a bolted table, cameras in every corner, and no windows. Maksim uses that room for valuable men who arrive alive and leave useful.

Abramov has posted two guards outside. Dima stands inside with a gun on Morozov. Maksim starts cutting the network apart before Morozov sits.

“Routes,” he says into the phone, standing behind the bolted table.

Yuri and Kirill feed updates from the comms bay.

Kirill answers through the speaker. “Riga side seized. Two freight lanes are frozen.”

“New Harbor,” Maksim says.

Yuri replies, “Accounts locked. Three shell processors are cut off.”

“Sable Crown.”

Abramov stands near the door with his phone in one hand. “Four contacts tried to wipe their devices. We caught the numbers, messages, and last calls before the screens went dead.”

“Political cover,” Maksim says.

A pause.

Then Yuri’s voice comes through the open line. “Two men cut off Morozov’s people. One called Leonid and asked what Volkov wants.”

Morozov stands hooded and restrained beside the table. Maksim steps in front of him and removes the hood himself.

Viktor Morozov blinks once in the hard light.

I want the fast answer. I want his blood on the floor.

I stand where I am.

Money goes first. Routes go next. Names follow. Maksim Volkov breaks the victory down by account, route, contact, and phone call, and I watch Viktor Morozov lose pieces of his world while no one fires a shot.

Years ago, I would have called it weakness. Tonight, I know better.

Maksim looks at Dima. “Keep him breathing. No visitors without me.”

Dima nods and puts Morozov into the chair with one hand on the back of his neck.

Abramov opens the chamber door, and Maksim steps out first. I follow him into the hall with two guards moving into place behind us.

“Go upstairs,” Maksim says without looking at me. “I’ll call you when he starts talking.”

I glance back once through the small glass panel. Morozov sits under the cameras with his hands bound to the table, and Dima stands behind him.

My shirt smells like gunfire. My hands look clean. My head keeps replaying Cara behind Patrick’s body with Mikhail’s blue car crushed in her fist.

I take the stairs up two at a time.

The north wing is warm when I reach it, and the sound of the lower level falls away behind me. A lamp burns low near the nursery doors. Sergei stands outside with a child’s sticker on his sleeve.

He sees me notice it and faces forward, his expression blank.

I don’t ask who put it there.