Page 86 of Bratva Baby

But Maks doesn’t know that.

“No one needs to know the answer tonight,” I say.

Zhenya gives me the number after a long pause, and she reads it once, slowly enough that I can write it in the margin of the Khimki schedule. Before she hangs up, her voice roughens. “If you put your hand in that wolf’s mouth, don’t do it halfway.”

“I won’t.”

The call ends, and for one second I stand over the number with the pen still in my hand. My pulse is fast, but my thoughts are not. They’re clean now. Almost cold. Maks understands fear when it has paperwork attached, and he understands my father’s name better than anyone else alive because he helped make that name dangerous in the last months before it went silent.

I dial before courage has time to turn into something weaker.

Maks answers on the fourth ring. “Sofiya.”

I hate his voice. I hate that smooth, careful warmth he uses when he wants someone to remember the knife only after it’s already in. My hand goes to my stomach, and the small contact steadies me in a way anger can’t.

“Call off your men.”

A soft breath moves through the line. “No hello?”

“Call them off.”

“You’ve always been rude under stress.” He sounds almost amused, which means he thinks he has room to enjoy this. “I assume Reznikov found something he shouldn’t have.”

“He found enough.”

“Then he should’ve stayed home.”

I lean my hip against the desk because my knees want to remember that I’m pregnant and terrified and in love with a man who may be bleeding out because he trusted my mind. None of that gets to reach my voice.

“You don’t have time to play with me,” I say. “Your men are holding the position because you don’t know whether Anton opened the right boxes yet. You want confirmation before you decide whether to burn the records, move them, or let him die beside them.”

Maks says nothing.

That’s the first gift.

I take it.

“You always did need one extra second before you committed,” I continue. “It’s why my father noticed you.”

His silence changes. “My uncle noticed ambition,” Maks says. “That’s not the same thing.”

“No, Maks. My father noticed fear. Ambition is what men like you call fear when they have money and drivers.”

His laugh is quiet, but the edges are gone. “You’re spending too much time with Reznikov. He’s making you theatrical.”

“Anton didn’t make me anything. He just listened when I told him where to look.”

A door shuts on his end. I hear it, and I picture him leaving whatever room he was in because he doesn’t want witnesses for the next part. “What do you want?” he asks.

“I told you. Call off your men.”

“And in return?”

I look at the clock over Anton’s library shelves. “You get to hear what my father left behind.”

Maks goes silent.

I let it sit because this is the part he needs to feel.