Chapter 6: Deeper Than She Planned
1119 Words
She heard the knock at 8am and opened the door to find no one there — just flowers on the doorstep and a single white envelope.
No delivery person. No guard. Just flowers — deep red roses, the expensive kind that didn't come from a market stall — arranged with the kind of quiet precision that said someone had paid careful attention.
Reina picked them up slowly and looked down the empty corridor.
Nothing.
She brought them inside, set them on the table and opened the envelope.
The note was handwritten. Short. Characteristically Viktor.
"Last night I overstepped. That was not my intention and I apologise. What happened was not planned — I got caught in the moment and that is not an excuse I would normally offer. You deserved better than that.
I will be away on business for some time. I am not sure how long.
I hope you will still be here when I return.
— V"
Reina read it twice.
Then she set it down on the table beside the roses and stood very still.
He had apologised. Not aggressively. Not with excuses or justifications. Just — cleanly, directly, without making it about himself. He had apologised the way a man apologises when he actually means it.
She picked the note back up.
Business trip.
She turned the phrase over carefully in her mind. Viktor Volkov did not take business trips the way ordinary men did. His business was not meetings and conference rooms and flight schedules. His business was empire — built on power and fear and the kind of dealings that never made it into any official record.
Someone was going to get hurt.
That was what she told herself. That was what she held onto as she folded the note carefully and slid it back into the envelope.
She should throw it away.
She put it in the drawer instead — not the locked one with her research. A different drawer. She noticed that distinction immediately and said nothing to herself about what it meant.
By the time her coffee was ready her mind was already working.
Viktor was going somewhere. He hadn't said where. He hadn't said why.
But someone in his circle would know.
And she was going to find out.
---
The mansion was quieter without Viktor in it.
Reina had noticed that immediately when she arrived — something in the air was different, lighter, like a pressure that had been lifted. The guards were still there. The cameras were still there. But the particular tension that followed Viktor Volkov from room to room was gone.
She had timed it perfectly.
Katya was in the garden when Reina arrived — she had made sure of that, texting ahead, keeping the conversation easy and warm. They sat together for twenty minutes, talking about nothing important, until Katya's phone rang and she excused herself with an apologetic smile.
"Two minutes," Katya said, already walking toward the far end of the garden. "Help yourself to anything inside."
Reina smiled.
"Take your time," she said.
She was in Viktor's office in less than ninety seconds.
The room was exactly as she remembered — dark, immaculate, every surface cleared of anything unnecessary. She moved quickly and methodically, the way she had been trained, starting with the filing cabinets along the far wall. Contracts. Property documents. Financial records going back years.
Nothing.
She checked behind the bookshelf. Under the desk. Inside the books themselves.
Nothing.
Then she noticed it.
One drawer in the bottom left of his desk — identical to all the others from the outside — with a lock that the others didn't have.
She crouched down and studied it for exactly four seconds. Then she reached into her jacket and pulled out the small tool she carried everywhere out of habit — old habits, the kind that had kept her alive longer than most.
The lock gave way in under a minute.
Inside were two things. A folder of documents and a small stack of photographs held together with a clip.
Reina's hands were steady as she opened the folder.
The document on top was an instruction. Typed. Official in the cold way that criminal organisations made things official. She read it once then read it again because the first time didn't make sense.
The instruction was clear — recover the outstanding debt from the targets by any means necessary. If payment could not be secured within the agreed timeframe Viktor was to ensure the matter was resolved permanently.
The targets named in the document were her parents.
Reina stopped breathing.
She turned to the photographs with hands that were no longer entirely steady.
Her parents. Younger — much younger — standing with a man she didn't recognise. Smiling. Comfortable. Like people who trusted the person behind the camera.
And in the background of one photograph — barely visible, half turned away — a teenage boy with grey eyes.
Viktor.
Her parents had known him. Before the fire. Before everything. They had known him.
She flipped through more documents frantically now — and then she stopped.
Her name.
Her full name, written in Viktor's own handwriting, in a record she couldn't yet fully understand. Next to it — a date. And a question mark.
Why did Viktor Volkov have her name in his records?
What was the money her parents owed and who had they owed it to?
And if Viktor had been given an instruction — who had given it?
"Reina?"
Katya's voice came from the corridor — closer than expected.
Reina moved.
She shoved everything back into the drawer, pressed it shut and was on her feet and three steps away from the desk by the time the office door opened. Her heart was slamming. Her face was completely still.
"There you are," Katya said, stepping in with a warm smile. "I was looking for you — what are you doing in here?"
Reina turned with an easy expression she didn't feel.
"I was just looking at his bookshelves," she said. "He has an interesting collection."
Katya glanced at the shelves and laughed.
"He never reads any of them," she said. "Come on — I made tea."
Reina followed her out of the office.
But her mind was still in that drawer.
Her parents had known Viktor. There had been a debt. Someone had given the order.
And her name — her name — was written in his handwriting with a question mark beside it.
Viktor Volkov had been looking for her.
The question that kept her awake all the way home was the one she was most afraid to answer.
How long had he known exactly who she was?
- Writer
