There was a pause, and then the woman said the name that made every secret in the room shift into a new shape.
“This is Nina.”
Ray’s eyes widened.
I gripped the phone tighter. “Where are you? Mikhail is looking for you.”
“No,” she said quickly. “Listen to me. You cannot give him the box.”
I looked down at the locked metal box on the basement floor.
“How do you know about the box?”
Her breath hitched.
“Because Thomas Bell hid it for my father.”
My heart stopped.
“Your father?”
Another burst of static.
Then Nina whispered,
“Viktor Volkov was not only Mikhail’s brother.”
The line crackled.
“He was mine, too.”
Part 3
For a moment, nobody moved.
The storm battered the diner windows as if the whole city were trying to get inside. Rainwater rolled down the glass in crooked silver lines, blurring the three black SUVs parked outside. Their headlights cut through the darkness, bright and unforgiving, turning every booth, every cracked tile, every tired red stool into something strange and theatrical.
The tall man in the black coat stood just inside the door.
Mikhail Volkov.
The name still meant nothing to me, not really. I had heard whispers in Chicago all my life. Men with money. Men with power. Men whose names made rooms go quiet. But I had never paid attention to that world because I had always been too busy surviving in mine.
My world was coffee that had to stretch one more pot.
Rent notices taped to the kitchen wall.
A neon sign that flickered on cold nights.
And hungry people who sometimes came in with coins instead of bills.
But this man carried the weight of another world on his shoulders.
And his little boy sat in my booth with apple pie crumbs on his mouth.
Misha looked up from the towel wrapped around his shoulders.
“Papa,” he whispered.
That single word changed everything about the man’s face.
The coldness cracked.
