Page 63 of Bratva Baby

“Meaning men. The kind who hate being cut out.”

That gets his attention properly.

I circle the first company name. “He’s pulling some people closer and freezing others out. Zhenya said that. If Maks is tightening, then somebody on the outside edge is already angry. Angry men talk, especially when they think somebody else is getting rich in a way they didn’t approve.”

Anton smiles slightly. “Now you sound like you belong in my meetings.”

I roll my eyes. “I belonged in them before your people discovered furniture and imported vodka.”

His laugh is brief and too pleased. “Good answer.”

I hate that my body responds to that voice every single time. “He needs three things to keep this alive,” I say. “Routes, silence, and a version of the story that protects him if silence breaks. We can’t hit all three at once with what we have. So we pick the one that makes the other two wobble.”

“Routes,” he says.

I look up at him. “Yes.”

He nods. “Good. Keep going.”

I tap the paper again. “If we prove he’s moving goods through revived family structures, then the money gets harder to explain and the story gets harder to stage. He can lie about me, call me unstable, say I’m compromised. But if a real shipment gets opened in the wrong place with the wrong paperwork attached to it, then his narrative starts losing value.”

Anton folds his arms. “You’ve got a specific shipment in mind.”

“Not a shipment. A type.”

He waits.

“Cold-chain. Something routine enough to move quietly and valuable enough that he won’t abandon it easily. He used the Finnish side for that already. If he’s still using refrigerated overflow and old vendor lines, then there will be another load soon. There has to be. Structures like this don’t exist to admire themselves.”

His eyes stay on my face. “That’s what I told them.”

“Then you were right.”

“Careful.”

“Don’t fish.”

He laughs again, lower this time, and the sound goes through me in a way I resent. Then he reaches past me, takes the pen from my fingers, and writes a date on the pad.

“This,” he says, tapping the number, “is when Helsinki flagged that declaration last week.”

I go still. “Why didn’t you say that sooner?”

“You were busy kissing me.”

I scowl at him. “That is a terrible defense.”

“Still accurate.”

I lean over the pad anyway. The date lines up too well with the timing from Zhenya and the earlier references in the copied files. My thoughts start moving faster.

“That means the next movement window is close,” I say. “Not weeks. Days.”

Anton nods. “That’s my reading too.”

I take the pen back and draw a line through the names. “Then this is what we do. We find the current relay on the old cold-chain line, identify the outer company still being used to clean it, and pressure the man just outside Maks’s circle who’s angry enough to want protection more than loyalty.”

He watches me for a second. “That’s not bad.”