Page 80 of Bratva Baby

Then he’s gone.

The door shuts behind him, and I’m left in the library with freight papers, cold pizza, a throw still tangled on the couch, and the first real operation of this whole war moving under my skin like a second pulse.

23

ANTON

As I take the private elevator down to the garage, I’ve got my jacket on, my gun at my back, and Sofiya’s last words stuck in my head.

If you come home empty-handed after I did your thinking for you, I’ll be unbearable.

I almost smiled when she said it, but I’m not smiling now.

Kolya is already waiting by the car with the engine running. He opens the passenger door, gives me one look, and says, “You left in a hurry.”

I get in and shut the door. “I left with purpose.”

He pulls us out of the garage and hands me a second phone. “That’s worse.”

I look down at the screen while he drives. Yard photos. Time stamps. Lane numbers. One refrigerated trailer backed into a side release bay under weak lights. Nothing about it stands out, and that’s exactly why it matters.

“The second lane opened,” Kolya says. “The truck’s still in the yard. One driver, one office clerk, and one extra man in a dark coat who doesn’t look like he belongs there.”

I lift my eyes from the screen. “That last man’s probably ours.”

“That was my thought.”

My phone buzzes in my hand. Sofiya.

I answer at once. “I told you to stay by the phone, not hover over it.”

Her voice comes back sharp and fully awake. “I’ll ignore that. Did the lane open?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And the clerk isn’t acting weird.”

This whole Khimki run is a cover job. Maks is using a refrigerated truck and a cold-yard release to make the load look legal, boring, and time-sensitive. On paper, it reads like food or medical stock moving through a routine hold. In reality, he’s using that cover to move records tied to his hidden shipping line, the shell companies attached to it, and the money trail behind it.

The clerk at the yard is there to push the first paperwork through and get the truck out without noise. If he looks calm, that usually means he’s not important enough to know the whole picture. He’s doing his piece and nothing more. The real risk comes later, after the truck leaves the yard and the load changes hands under a new set of papers. That second stop is where Maks’s real people are more likely to be.

“Good,” she says right away. “Then don’t waste time on him.”

Kolya glances over and looks back at the road before I can tell him to stop listening.

“What’ve you got?” I ask.

“The same thing I had ten minutes ago, so nothing new,” she says. “Just be careful.”

I settle back in my seat and look out at the road ahead. “Stay where you are.”

“You stay alive.”

She hangs up without another word. Once she starts thinking, she cuts straight to the point. I need that tonight.

We hit Khimki in under twenty minutes. The yard sits in a dead strip of concrete and fencing near older storage roads and little office blocks that stay useful because nobody asks what they’re doing after midnight. It’s close enough to the penthouse to be convenient and close enough to annoy me.