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“Have we reached story time?” Anika moved to stand next to me, her hand falling to my shoulder and resting there.

Pressing my cheek to her soft skin, I picked up the top book and flipped it open. “Our daughter has standards this book could never meet. I mean look at this illustration.” I showed her a picture of a dancing bear. “He has no charisma.” I handed it to her and removed the next. “Alina left journals where anyone opening the locker would see them. Maybe she hoped they'd stop after discovering the sad, obvious secret.”

Roman knelt at the end of the shelf and aimed his light along the back panel. “The locker dimensions match the interior. No false compartment.”

“You see? He searches like an adult.” I opened the fifth book and bent the cover back. Its binding cracked. The sixth did the same. “I search like I was the one doing the hiding.”

The seventh book resisted when I pulled it open.

It was a thin story about a girl collecting pieces of the moon. The pages fanned when I ran my thumb across their edges, but the spine remained rigid, and the back cover was slightly thicker than the others. I ran my thumb over the binding and felt a slight bulge at the same time I noticed a tear in the lower corner where the cover pulled away from the board underneath.

Anika traced the silver moon on its front. “We read that one to patients. Alina hated the ending, so she made up a better one.”

“So she wasn’t always a bitch?” I winced at my tone and Anika’s sharp breath slicing over my cheek. “I won’t apologize for what I said, because it’s true. I’m sorry I hurt you.” I slipped my knife beneath the paper lining the back cover.

Roman caught my wrist before the blade carved into the spine. “If there’s something in there, and you mangle it, I will cut you open with your own knife.”

“Such hostility around children’s books.” I tsked and slid the knife slowly around the edge, peeling the paper back bit by bit. “Even fictional children deserve better, Roman.”

He ignored me in favor of watching my hands, his own clenching with what I knew to be a desperate desire to take the book from me and do the work himself. Control freaks. Both of them. I rolled my eyes and worked the point of the knife into another corner, sliding between the lining, and peeled the paper back.

A slim black data module occupied a cavity cut into the cover.

Anika leaned close enough for her hair to brush my arm. “That's what she wanted us to find.”

“Yes.” I lifted the module free, grabbed the laptop from the bag, and connected the module through a shielded adapter. A hardware signature flashed across the screen, followed by an encryption notice and a plain-text directory. “The cache is encrypted.” But Roman wasn’t the only one with excessive experience with technology. I pulled up one of my custom programs and put it to work. “Ten seconds. Tops.”

Maksim grunted, which was as close to acceptance as we were likely to get in this situation.

“Come on, baby. Work hard for daddy.” I focused on the numbers flying over the screen, mentally counting down. I’d just reached two when thousands of entries filled the directory. Names appeared beside dates, organizations, cities, and evidence types. Audio. Video. Banking records. Government correspondence. Each entry carried a source, a verification status, and a chain showing how Alina obtained it.

Maksim read the first page over my shoulder. “Judge Leonid Savin.”

“He dismissed the Karpov prosecution four years ago.” I selected the entry. A scanned order appeared beside three transfers from a Sokolov company to an account controlled by the judge's brother. “She has the original payment instructions and a recording of Savin confirming the amount.”

Yes. Fucking finally. We were getting somewhere. I scrolled before either one of them could stop me, unwilling to get stuck on one record when hundreds more waited to be examined. A federal agent had sold witness locations. A customs director opened inspection lanes for weapons shipments. Two city officials traded development contracts for men who disappeared the following day. Bratva leaders from five cities paid Sokolov for information about their rivals while promising those same rivals protection from him.

Every name connected to three more. The evidence was the anatomy of an empire, with Sokolov at the heart and enough veins exposed for us to make the entire thing bleed.

None of the cases depended on a single payment. I chuckled under my breath. “I have to give it to her. She’s a pain in the ass, but she’s smart.” I tapped the screen. “Alina paired bank records with calls, photographs, travel logs, and messages written by these men. Destroying one witness or bribing one prosecutor won’t erase the pattern. She built proof of their corruption.”

Anika gripped the back of my chair, her hair a constant touch on my cheek that made me want to bind my hands around it and pull her into my lap. Later. Not while in the middle of a revelation. Anika’s eyes narrowed. “She collected this while working for him.”

“For years.” I opened the file history and pointed out the dates. “Every theft gave her access to another protected system. She copied the evidence before moving whatever Sokolov ordered her to take.”

The final section tracked money through safe apartments, forged passports, paid caregivers, and emergency transportation. Alina had bribed border officers three times. She'd purchased passage on two ships, rented houses under names abandoned within weeks, and paid men to watch Mikhail's guards. Every escape attempt ended with another transfer and another move recorded in the journals.

Maksim planted both hands on the small table. “The fortune we thought she'd stolen funded this.”

I separated the transactions by color, decoding them as I worked. “Not the original thirty million. That principal remained untouched. She moved later deposits through the same structure and spent portions whenever she tried to reach Mikhail.”

“So the money was camouflage.” Anika stared at the safe-house photographs. “She let everyone hunt the fortune because it kept them from looking for this.”

I tapped Sokolov's name at the center of the index. “Money is replaceable. These people can earn, steal, and extort more. They can't replace a judge after everyone sees the receipt for his soul.”

“Or an agent whose witnesses start dying.” Maksim's expression hardened as he moved down the list. “Every person named here has a reason to kill Alina, recover the cache, and silence anyone she's told.”

Anika's hand went to the silver ring. “Including Nora.”