Page 90 of The Bratva's Secret Baby
“Good.”
She hangs up first.
I dial the second number.
He answers before the ring finishes.
“Dominik,” he says.
“That name stays buried,” I reply.
A short pause. “Your voice didn’t change.”
Igor Smirnov used to move Markov’s southern shipments back when Markov’s operation still looked stable from the outside.
When that stopped being true and people started dying, Igor stepped sideways and stayed alive. Now he works inside a municipal construction bureau, which means he knows which buildings are empty, which permits get rubber-stamped, and who still has pull.
“You said you were done,” he says.
“I said I wasn’t pushing,” I tell him. “That’s not the same thing.”
Silence, then the sound of paper sliding across a desk.
“They’re reopening the corridor reviews,” he says. “Infrastructure, medical supply chains, private security contracts. You’re late to get a seat.”
“That’s why I’m calling,” I say. “I don’t need the seat. I need to be seen entering the room.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“There’ll be people there who never put their names on anything,” he says. “They watch. They don’t talk.”
“I know.”
“They won’t be there for you.”
“They don’t have to be,” I reply. “They just need to see who I arrive with.”
He exhales, slow. “You’re planting yourself.”
“Yes.”
“That makes you expensive to touch,” he says.
“That’s the idea.”
The line stays silent for a moment.
“I can get you in under consulting,” Igor says finally. “Security oversight. Hospital-adjacent projects. It will look ordinary. It won’t be.”
“Send me the time and place,” I say. “Nothing traceable.”
“I’ll send it once,” he replies. “After that, you don’t use my name.”
“I won’t.”
The call ends.
I stand still for a moment after, then put the phone away. The meeting isn’t about deals. It’s about positioning. Once I walk into that room as Nikolai Sokolov, married, employed, documented, I stop being a problem that can be lifted off the board. I become something that has to be managed in daylight.
