Page 26 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

The second is an article from a European outlet about port corruption in Rotterdam, and the word Vernigora is in the third paragraph, and the word beside it is alleged.

Tonight wasn’t alleged. It was pure violence. Pure violence with a witness.

The third is a think-tank report on transnational organized crime with a PDF, and I click it. Vernigora. New York/Baltic routes. Logistics, suspected Bratva affiliation, links to European and East Asian syndicates—it all blurs together.

I scroll on. A shipping-industry blog, three years old, about a customs official in Riga who retired early and then didn’t turn up for his own retirement party. A Reddit post asking if anyone had worked for Vernigora Logistics and whether it was “weird,” with forty replies that all say some version of the pay is great, don’t ask questions.

Suspected. Alleged. Reported ties. Unconfirmed.

Every sentence wears its little legal seatbelt, and none of the seatbelts matter, because I’m not reading this the way a stranger would. I know too much to pay attention to the seatbelt.

The results start to blur together—there’s so many of them. A grainy photo a decade old, a funeral in Brighton Beach, men in black coats around a grave. The caption names two of them. One name I don’t know.

The other is Lev Dworkin. The man who sits at Maxim’s right hand in every meeting I’ve minuted since Maxim returned, who turns his phone face-down on the walnut before the real conversation starts.

I close the laptop and try to breathe. My body appears to think that’s still optional. Same with my brain—not the breathing, but the thinking. I can gather bratva evidence all night long, if I wanted. It wouldn’t make a difference.

I’m in over my head. No matter what else is true about any of this, I’m in way over my head.

I sit in my kitchen with my coat still on, and Potato jumps into my lap and starts his motor. He’s trying to help me calm down. I complain, but he’s a good little bastard.

I stare at my reflection in the dark window over the sink. My blouse is mis-buttoned. Hair wrecked. Twenty-seven years old, holding a purring cat, trying to sort out my next steps.

Am I allowed to quit my job? Is this a, “Once you’re in, you can never leave,” situation? I don’t think so. The forums included people who worked for Vernigora Industries and left.

But they also weren’t fucking Maxim.

The Bratva. My company is the Bratva. My boss is a boss. A pakhan, according the internet. And I had sex with him. Does that mean… I don’t even know.

What have I gotten myself into?

12

MAXIM

Lev’s call comes at four in the morning. “Kirill’s gone. Transport stop on the turnpike, the service plaza past Newark. He went through the van’s ceiling vent while Yuri bought fuel. Vanished into the truck lots.”

“Injuries?”

“Pride. Sasha has a wrist that will need looking at, from the garage, not from the escape. No one was cut, no one was shot. He did not even take their phones.” A pause travels down the line. “He wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, Maxim. He was leaving.”

I stand at the window and watch the river shine under city lights beneath the bridges. I’m disappointed by the loss of Kirill and unsurprised as well. A combination only two living people produce in me. One is my son. The other is Kirill.

The man has been apprehended four times over the course of twenty years, to the best of my knowledge. He was detained twice by adversaries, once by the Polish authorities in Gdansk, and once for a period of one week by the federal government of the United States. He’s never been confined in any facility.

Alexei doesn’t keep him for his conversation. He keeps him because Kirill is the knife that always comes back.

“He permitted us to seize him.”

“How do you mean?”

“He fought sufficiently to appear credible in the garage, then lost the fight. Too easily. He didn’t get captured for nothing.”

“Then the question is what he collected while he was ours.”

“The question is why Sokolov sent him to be captured. What could he have possibly gathered in such a short span of time?” I watch a barge slide beneath the bridge. It’s lit like a Christmas tree so it can be seen. Otherwise, barges move like ghosts in the dark. But this one wants to be seen. To be found. Like Kirill.

Normally, the man is a ghost. This time, he was a nuisance. Why? “Nothing on the interrogation?”