Page 68 of The Pakhan's Secret Babies
“How long has he had her schedule?” I say.
“Based on the timestamp on the earliest communication, three weeks.”
Three weeks. Elena has been attending that clinic for three weeks with a detail whose size and rotation Grigori Volkov has been passing to a syndicate that specializes in targeted extractions. Three weeks of Tuesday mornings, where the difference between what happened and what could havehappened was the timing of Grigori’s arrangement with Marchetti and nothing else.
“Get Dimitri,” I say. “Pavel, Gregor, and the two men on Elena’s overnight rotation. I want all of them in this room in twenty minutes.”
Kostya stands.
“And, Kostya.” I look at him. “The prenatal clinic. Find me a private facility. A good one, somewhere not on any list connected to this family. She goes there from now on. New route every time, confirmed the morning of, nobody outside this room knows it in advance.” I look at the window. “Tonight, we change every rotation schedule she’s on. Every route, every timing, every point of contact. Nothing that Grigori has passed to them is still accurate by morning.”
“Done,” Kostya says, and leaves.
I sit at my desk, and I look at the folder he left open on the chair across from me, and I look at the decoded communication printed on the second page, and I read Grigori’s language again.
Leverage sufficient to force a full concession or a voluntary step down.
He has been watching her walk into that clinic, and he has been feeding that information to men whose job it is to take people, and he has been doing it for three weeks while sitting in council meetings and filing emergency session requests and conducting himself as a man operating within the structure of an organization that he has been dismantling from the inside for fourteen months.
I close the folder.
I do not go to Elena’s room.
I make this decision deliberately, and I sit with it for a moment to make sure it is the right one, and it is. What I have to tell her is not something I’m going to deliver at midnight after she has just fallen asleep. What I have to tell her requires a conversation, and the conversation requires me to have the full picture first, which I do not have yet, and it requires her to be able to ask me questions I can actually answer, which I cannot do until the security restructure is in place and I know exactly what I’m protecting her from and how.
Tomorrow.
Tonight I build the walls.
The five men fill the study, and I stand at the desk, and I lay it out without preamble. Grigori Volkov has passed Elena’s schedule and security detail to the Marchetti syndicate as part of an arrangement for her extraction. As of tonight, every element of her routine that Grigori could have accessed changes. I go through it item by item.
New prenatal facility, location confirmed by Kostya, appointment rescheduled for Thursday, new route to be determined Wednesday evening and communicated to the driver Thursday morning only. Elena’s standing weekly schedule, the grocery run on Thursdays, the visits to her father on Sundays, the occasional evening when Mara comes to the penthouse, all of it suspended until further notice or rerouted through new protocols.
Her detail increases from four to eight, two visible, two in the immediate vicinity, two on the perimeter, two on the building overnight. Nobody outside this room has access to her location at any given time. Any request for information about her schedule, regardless of who makes it, comes directly to me.
The men listen and do not ask questions because they do not need to ask questions.
When I’m finished, Kostya says the council session is in four days.
“I know,” I say. “The Renko file needs the Marchetti communication added. Every decoded page. When I walk into that room on Friday, I’m putting down evidence of a sitting council member coordinating a kidnapping plot against the Pakhan’s pregnant wife.” I look at Kostya. “There is not a man on that council who will protect him after that.”
Kostya nods. The other men file out. Kostya stays.
“The emergency session request,” he says. “Grigori filed a second one this afternoon. He is citing new evidence of operational security breaches.”
“He’s trying to get into that room before I can present,” I say. “Deny it again. Same grounds.”
“Denying it twice tells him we know he is accelerating.”
“He already knows we know. He’s not trying to surprise us. He’s trying to move before we can present on Friday, and he cannot do that if we keep him out of that room.” I look at the window. “He needs the council chamber to make his move legitimate. Without it, he’s just a man who has committed treason, waiting to be dealt with.”
Kostya leaves.
I sit down at my desk, pull the Renko file toward me, add the decoded Marchetti communication to the back of it, and begin building the council presentation from the beginning, laying out each piece in the order that will do the most damage when I put it on that table on Friday.
At one thirty in the morning, my phone vibrates on the desk with a notification from the building’s external camera system. A flagged vehicle, parked on the street across from the building entrance, has been stationary for one hundred and sixty-three minutes.
I pick up the phone, and I look at the camera feed.
