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“‘That is the lie I used to live with myself,’” Anika read. “‘The truth is that I decided the risk was acceptable because the person at risk was you instead of Mikhail. I loved you, and I used you anyway.’”

Kirill rose so abruptly the locker door rattled against the wall. He paced to the end of the narrow aisle, hands opening and closing at his sides before he gave in and threw a punch that dented the metal. “At least she managed one honest sentence.”

Anika didn't defend her sister. That concerned me more than if she'd shouted at him. She studied Alina's handwriting as though she could find an alternate meaning buried beneath the ink.

“You can stop.” I lowered my voice when her eyes found mine. “Stopping doesn't mean forgiving her, protecting her, or failing her. It means you choose when she gets more of you.”

“If I stop, I'll spend every second imagining something worse.” She straightened the page. “I need the facts.”

Of course she did. I traced her knuckles with my thumb. “Then take them. We’re here for you.” We should probably go. We’d be safer elsewhere, but we needed to see this through, and I doubted Anika would go anywhere until she had all the information from Alina’s journals.

She blinked, squeezing her eyes shut, then sighed and kept reading. “‘I thought I could finish the transfer and move Mikhail before anyone found you, but Sokolov tightened his hold. They spent five years hunting the wrong sister, and I let them because correcting their mistake would've exposed you to mine. I called that protection too. It wasn't. It was another decision I made without giving you a choice.’”

“She knew we blamed you.” Maksim's voice lost every trace of warmth. “For five years.”

“Looks that way.” Anika's tone went flat, but her thumb had begun worrying the edge of the paper hard enough to leave a crease. “She knew, and she still came into my home. She held Nora and never said a word about any of this.”

No explanation could soften that. Alina had feared Sokolov and loved her child. She’d also watched her sister build a life over a minefield and never warned her where she'd buried the charges.

Kirill came back, the wildness contained but not gone. “We rescue the children. We keep Alina alive long enough to hear every answer. What you do with her after that belongs to you.”

“Not entirely.” Anika brushed the heel of her hand beneath one eye. “She hurt all of you too.”

“We thought she stole money.” I waited until she looked at me. “Money can be recovered. What we did to you can't be fixed. Don’t you fucking dare make our anger another debt you have to pay.”

Her fingers shifted against mine, lacing us together in a move that offered peace even if it wasn’t forgiveness. She would probably offer that too, but I wasn’t ready to accept it.

She returned to the letter. “‘The money was never the point. Sokolov believed he was using my talent to weaken his enemies. Every system he forced me to enter gave me something he didn't know I kept. Payment lists. Recordings. Names of officials who protected him and men who purchased that protection. I copied all of it. At first, I wanted leverage for Mikhail. Later, I understood leverage would only buy another cage unless I could destroy the man holding the key.’”

Maksim looked toward the journals stacked on the floor. “The records of every move. Every failed escape.”

“A map of what didn't work.” Anika moved to the final paragraphs. “‘I hid the proof in the one place that existed before Sokolov entered our lives. If I reached the locker first, I planned to trade it for my son. If you reached it, I needed you to understand why every organization connected to him would kill to possess it. They aren't chasing a fortune. They're chasing the names that make their power possible.’”

The journals contained Alina's fear. The locker held something else. She’d collected evidence capable of turning Sokolov's allies against him and prosecutors toward every man who kept him untouchable. Thirty million dollars could be replaced. The network beneath an empire could not.

Anika reached the bottom of the page. Her gaze moved once from left to right, then returned to the far edge. She took a careful breath. “‘I won't ask you to forgive me. I only ask you to understand that I never stole thirty million dollars. I stole something far worse.’”

23

KIRILL

The last sentence settled over the annex and made every dusty locker remind me of graves. I’d like to put Sokolov in one and watch him rot for the next decade. Alina…well, I’d let Anika decide her fate, because if it was left up to me, I’d probably choose wrong. I wanted Anika safe at almost any cost, even if that meant taking out her sister.

Anika folded the letter along its original creases with slow, exact movements. Her face had emptied of everything except the fury in her eyes, and I wanted to feed that fury something useful. Preferably Sokolov.

“Far worse than thirty million narrows the possibilities.” I looked into the open locker. “Roman's personality. Maksim's patience. My extensive collection of excellent knives.”

Anika pressed the letter against her chest. “She stole my ability to laugh at inappropriate moments.”

“Impossible. You used it ten minutes ago.” I held out my hand, and she gave me the letter. “We'll recover everything.”

The promise included more than money and children. I had no idea how to return five years to her or rebuild whatever remained between the sisters, but impossibility had never discouraged me. It usually made the work more interesting.

Maksim began gathering the journals in chronological order while Roman photographed the inside of the locker. They approached evidence the same way every time. Maksim secured it. Roman preserved it. I looked for the thing a clever woman hoped serious men would dismiss, namely the evidence she mentioned. It would be unlikely she kept it in the same place as the letter, but I was well fucking beyond the point of letting reason control my actions.

Seven children's books filled the lower shelf, their bright covers faded by age. The hospital's volunteer-program stamp marked the title page of each one when I flipped them open. Nothing about them matched the journals except their number, and Alina didn't strike me as a woman who arranged accidental symmetry.

I put them into a stack based on copyright year then fanned them out.