And the silence that follows burns like hellfire.

“Torch the corpses,” I instruct my men as Milana starts walking over towards me.

She doesn’t so much as glance at the still-warm bodies she steps over to get to me. “This was your fourth firing squad in three days,” she points out, as if I wasn’t already aware of that fact.

“I’m thinning the herd.”

“You’re lashing out.”

I ignore her. “Did you manage to track down Kulikov?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods?” she retorts. “Of course I got him. I had him brought to the east side warehouse. You won’t be disturbed there.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

I climb into my car. Milana gets into the passenger seat. Her eyes keep flitting over to my face as though she’s waiting for me to speak.

“Should you be doing this now?” Milana ventures when it becomes clear I’m not about to break the silence.

I stare out the window as we chew up the road, engine purring. “Why would I wait?”

“Because you’ve been working nonstop since—” She breaks off abruptly when I shoot her an impatient glare out of the corner of my eye. “Since Ravil died,” she amends. “It’s been five days, Kolya. Even you need to sleep at some point.”

“I sleep plenty.”

Twenty minutes here, twenty minutes there. Just enough to give me the energy to kill a few more of Ravil’s men the next day.

“We’re going to draw unnecessary attention if we keep going this way,” she continues in a soothing, don’t-freak-out voice that she’s never used on me before. “It might be smart to take a step back and—”

“A step back?” I growl furiously. “A step back. A fucking step back?”

“Kol—”

“I have to find her.”

She flinches but doesn’t give up the topic yet. “Have you considered the possibility that maybe—”

“No,” I interrupt in an icy snarl. “I haven’t.”

Milana clamps her mouth shut and stares out the windshield for the remainder of the drive.

3

JUNE

The forest green mold on the wall swirls and bleeds into the cracked white paint. Sometimes, when I squint, I can see different things in it.

One night, it is a ballerina with a broken leg.

Another, it is a black Hummer emerging from the shadows.

Most of the time, though, it’s the same thing: the silhouette of a tall man with broad shoulders and splintering blue eyes.

He’s not haunting me, per se. It feels more like he’s searching for me. Most mornings, I wake up wishing he would find me already.

I’m not exactly a prisoner. But when I open my eyes at the start of each new day, it sometimes feels that way, at least in the sense that my world has shrunk down to something like a cell. Just these four concrete walls, barren and oppressive.

I push myself off the creaky single bed and stretch. The room still smells of last night’s greasy fast food. Cheap oil and fried chicken hide the smell of laundry detergent that clings to the walls of this place.