Chapter 11
980 Words
Brooklyn never really sleeps, but some streets forget to breathe.
The alley behind the old bakery on Brighton Beach Avenue is one of them—quiet, damp, dimly lit by a single flickering bulb. A black SUV sits parked in the shadow, windows tinted, engine off. Inside, two men watch the sidewalk like hunters waiting for a deer to step into the open.
They’ve been here for hours. They don’t complain. Ukrainians don’t complain when they’re working. They endure.
The older one, Mykola, scrolls through pictures on a small tablet: grainy shots of Lila walking to the subway, Lila stopping at a convenience store, Lila unlocking the front door of her building. Always alone. Always looking over her shoulder. She feels the eyes even when she can’t see them.
“Third time she checked the street before going inside,” Mykola mutters.
The younger one, Maksym, smirks. “Means she knows.”
“She always knew,” Mykola replies. “He let her go.”
He never says the man’s name. None of them do.
In their world, names have weight. His is too heavy.
Mykola zooms into the picture of her entering the building. Her shoulders are hunched, her steps quick. She looks exhausted, but she’s alive. That fact alone bothers him.
“She should’ve died in that forest,” Maksym says casually, cleaning dirt from under his nails with a small knife. “Everybody dies in that forest.”
“Everyone except her,” Mykola says.
There is silence. Heavy. Uncomfortable.
They were told one thing:
Find the girl. Watch the girl. Report everything.
But Maksym is young. Impulsive. He wants the kill. He wants the glory.
“They’re treating her like she’s special,” he grumbles. “Why? Because she’s pretty?”
Mykola shakes his head. “Not pretty. Important.”
“Important how?”
Mykola looks at him with the calm of a man who has seen too much. “He brought her to the warehouse. He interrogated her. And she walked out breathing. That never happens. So yes… she matters.”
He taps the tablet.
“She knows something. Maybe not intentionally. But she knows.”
Maksym leans back. “We could take her tonight.”
Mykola shuts that down with one look.
“We follow orders. Nothing more.”
But Maksym doesn’t listen well.
He watches people walk by the alley—couples, teenagers, an old man with groceries. Brooklyn is noisy in the way that hides danger. No one would notice a girl disappearing.
“What if someone else finds her first?” he pushes.
“No one else is looking.”
Mykola’s voice is steady. “It’s just us.”
He doesn’t add the real reason.
The others fear the man who spared her.
The two of them? They just fear disobeying him.
Mykola opens a message on his encrypted phone.
A single sentence blinks on the screen:
Report. Now.
“We saw her return home,” he types. “No contact with anyone. Only her father.”
He hesitates before adding:
“She is unsettled. She senses surveillance.”
He sends it.
Three dots appear.
Disappear.
Reappear.
Continue tailing her. Do not engage.
Maksym curses under his breath. “This is pointless.”
“You want to die young?” Mykola asks. “Because that is what happens to men who ignore orders.”
Maksym clicks his tongue but says nothing more.
They stay still for a few minutes, listening to car horns and faraway sirens. The city hums around them, unaware of the violence sitting quietly in its corners.
Mykola checks the time. “She starts school again on Monday. That’s when movement increases. More places, more faces, more chances.”
Maksym grins. “More openings.”
“No.”
Mykola’s tone is sharp. “More to observe.”
He zooms out to a map of Brooklyn with pins marking her usual routes—school, her apartment, a small café she visits twice a week, a bookstore she lingers in but never buys from. Patterns. Predictable. Easy.
Too easy.
“She’s hiding something,” Maksym says.
“Or someone hid something for her,” Mykola replies.
And again, the man they refuse to name sits unspoken between them, like a ghost pressing a hand to both their throats.
Maksym closes his knife. “Why do you think he let her go?”
“I don’t think,” Mykola says. “I follow.”
Another car passes the alley, headlights sweeping across the SUV for half a second. Mykola watches the street carefully. Maksym watches him instead.
“You’re scared of him,” Maksym says.
“Everyone is scared of him.”
Mykola gives a mirthless smile. “That’s why he leads. And we follow.”
The younger man slumps back in his seat, irritated but quiet.
After a moment, Mykola speaks again.
“She will slip eventually. They always do. Fear makes people predictable.”
“And when she slips?” Maksym asks.
“We’ll be there,” Mykola answers. “We always are.”
His phone buzzes a second time. Another message.
He wants hourly updates. No mistakes.
Maksym whistles. “He’s obsessed.”
“He is cautious,” Mykola corrects. “There’s a difference.”
Outside, the streetlight flickers again, showering the pavement in pale yellow. A woman walks past with her dog. A bus rumbles by. Everything seems normal.
But inside the SUV, two men study the world like predators memorizing a hunting ground.
“Tomorrow,” Mykola says, turning off the tablet. “We start earlier.”
“And the girl?”
He gives Maksym a cold, thin smile.
“She won’t see us. But we’ll see everything.”
They sit back, silent, patient, watching the street that Lila will walk again.
Because they don’t forget.
And they don’t forgive.
Not until the job is done.
- Writer
