Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Gregor

Isweated my way through Vasily’s debriefing while, across town in my apartment, a tiny nameless girl slept in my bed with my cat curled up next to her. I hated leaving her alone, but in the circumstances, I had no choice. Thankfully, as my line of work entails some personal danger, I have security cameras all around my home, so I could check in on her regularly and make sure she was safe. Hopefully, she’d still be sleeping by the time I returned. She had demolished her early breakfast, accepted one of my t-shirts, and said not one word. But the way she’d eaten, the way she’d slept, and the exhausted, solemn calmness with which she went along with me told me she’d been through something terrible.

I had no idea what to tell Vasily about her. I was outraged that I had ended up in a situation that, if I had followed orders blindly, would have led to my killing a kid for him. The girl being there had to be some mistake. But somehow, despite that, despite my professionalism and what he expected of me, I said absolutely nothing about her.

He would find out eventually, more likely than not. But at least I had bought some time to come up with a truly innovative excuse. Maybe if I was lucky, he wouldn’t even find out until the girl had been relocated somewhere safe.

Vasily went over the photos I had taken before torching the place—four targets, four bodies. Then he looked up at me, his bushy white eyebrows rising toward his hairline. “Any complications?”

“None. Besides the weather, anyway.” I pulled at a loose thread on my sweater, the focus of the movement hopefully hiding any signs I was lying.

“Good.” He checked something on his laptop while I glanced around, trying to figure out what to do with all my nervous energy. I hated lying to my pakhan, but until I knew the girl’s story, I wanted to keep her safe from everyone—and that included my boss.

“I found some pretty strange things in that house,” I started, wondering if I could get some of the mystery solved.

“Put it out of your mind.” He didn’t even look up from his work. “There is no time to concern ourselves with things like that. They crossed me, they are dead for it now. I’ll have a new assignment for you soon. We have some more housecleaning to do. Some of our people have forgotten where their loyalties should lie. We must make enough examples that the rest are reminded.”

“I understand.” I didn’t. There was something odd in how quickly he had brushed my questions aside. How vehement he was about getting this done. Like the presence of the child, it didn’t fit.

“Good. Consider yourself on call for the next week.” He opened his desk and pulled out a thick packet of twenties, then another. He eyed me, then sniffed once and added a third. “Make it two.”

“I’ll keep my phone on me,” I promised, taking the cash and tucking it away. But my confusion still gnawed at me as he dismissed me, and I walked away.

Vasily and I had always had a good working relationship. He wasn’t always transparent about why he wanted me to go after this target or another, but if I had specific questions, he would generally answer them. Not this time. And the discrepancy set off little alarm bells in my head.

Leaving my meeting I quickly checked my phone, the little girl was sleeping so that was good. I got burgers on my way home, not wanting to waste time cooking when I had some independent investigating to do. I had stolen every laptop and external hard drive in the Ivanov house and planned to go through them all tonight. Learn who my targets had been, what they were really into, and how the little fairy princess snoozing in my apartment fit into all of it.

When I opened my door, it was quiet aside from my cat trotting up to me meowing at the top of his lungs. “Let me guess, there is perhaps a few centimeters of the bottom of your food bowl showing.”

He trailed me into the kitchen, where I filled in the offensive gap with a fistful of kibble. He immediately settled in to munch like he was starving despite being built like a muscular sofa cushion.

No signs of stirring from the bedroom. I opened the door and froze when I saw that the bed was empty. Fuck, where did she go?

But then I caught sight of a tiny foot sticking out from underneath. I crouched down and found her fast asleep, hiding under the bed.

I smiled at the cuteness of it, but then my smile faded. I had to wonder what had happened to her that she preferred to sleep under a strange bed rather than on top of it.

My mind went back to that photo studio, with its video and still cameras and its big bed. They couldn’t have involved her, could they? She was a baby.

The idea made me sick with anger. I didn’t kill them slowly enough.

But I had rescued the kid. She was safe now. I could find out where the hell she came from and, hopefully, where she belonged.

I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and waited. After a while, she pulled her leg back in. Several seconds later, a tiny blonde head poked out. She blinked up at me curiously.

“Hi there. I’m back, and I brought burgers,” I offered. Was this how one dealt with children? Even my childhood had not really been one, not after my parents died. Children were a bit of an alien species to me.

She considered me for a moment, then clambered out to sit beside me. “You sleep okay?” I asked. “I washed your footie pajamas this morning, they should be dry now.”

Another new experience, ordering girls’ clothes in her size online, doing my best to sort out everything from sneakers to a warm overcoat. Everything for little girls was candy-colored and looked unforgivably cheap. I tried to make sure that what I got her at least went together, but this was light years from purchasing a suit from my tailor.

We went to the kitchen, and she ate her fries so fast I was surprised she didn’t choke. The burger she worked on more slowly, with determined little chomps while she looked from me to her food and back again.

“You don’t talk much, do you, little one?” I sighed. My own burger was still wrapped, set aside while I watched her put away a meal that could have satisfied a large adult. How long since she’d had a good meal? How bad were things for her in that place, besides being trapped?

Don’t think of it now. It’s over and done. I couldn’t let myself get wrapped up in the horror too much. I had to find out where this kid belonged.

“So…the people in your house…was that your family?” I asked, sticking to yes or no questions.

She shook her head no.

I set my jaw and nodded grimly. “Did they take you from your family?”

A nod for yes.

Those crystal blue eyes looked so damn familiar. I knew where I had seen eyes just like them before. It had been a one-night stand half a decade ago, but I had never forgotten one moment of it. The girl’s coloring, like my past lover’s, was so distinctive that it seemed impossible that it was a coincidence, but I knew it had to be.

Alissa was the only past lover I thought of with such fondness that I regretted letting her go. She had learned the pleasures of sex in my arms and what she should expect from her lovers. But as was my policy every time, I had moved on quickly, and had been open about that from the start.

“Do you want me to find your mom and dad for you?”

She nodded enthusiastically, almost poking herself with her shake straw.

“What’s your mommy’s name?”

She looked puzzled. Then again, at that age would a kid know what their mom’s name was, other than mommy? I doubt they did.

“Okay, kid. I’ll start looking later tonight. Don’t you worry about anything. I’ll take care of you in the meantime.”

To my surprise, she leaned her little head against my arm. I froze like a kitten had hopped into my lap, not sure what to do. Finally, I just said, “It’s okay, little one. Everything will be all right.”

I hoped that turned out to be true. As for the mystery of her parents, I was confident I could track them down. It was part of what I did. Nobody could hide from me, or be hidden, for long. It was part of why Vasily relied on me so very much. And a little girl with such a distinctive look? There had to be something in the newspapers if she’d been taken. Unless her parents had been involved in the underworld and had sold her. God, I hoped that wasn’t the case.

***

That night, once my little guest had finished her meal, bathed, and changed back into her clean pajamas and gone to sleep, I sat down at my desk with half a dozen laptops taken from the Ivanovs and proceeded to break into them one by one. It wasn’t a perfect process. I couldn’t get past some of their passwords would need to ask Sergei for help on this, but I kept on, doggedly, until I managed to break into some of the files.

Ten minutes in, I almost wished I hadn’t. There were more files of illegal porn on those computers than I had ever seen in my life. Three categories, with crossovers, according to the included catalog file—non-consensual, snuff, and young.

I only watched enough to verify that they were what they said they were. It wasn’t easy on me, and I was half drunk before I could finish that part of my investigation.

The only thing I was glad of was that my little guest didn’t seem to be in any of it. My guess was that they had still been in the process of grooming her to be one of their actresses. But others had gone through all of it, and God only knew where they, or their bodies, were now.

It pissed me off. It was even more offensive that they ran the whole thing like any other part of our business, including ledgers, asset lists, and information on the current and former occupants of those rooms. Clearly, this was a side business that grew beyond what they could hide, and Vasily had them killed for it.

I still didn’t know what exactly the Ivanovs had been doing for Vasily above board. Probably some more normal camgirl and porn stuff. The man I knew wouldn’t stand for any of the rest of it unless it was completely faked.

I doubted anything the Ivanovs did was faked. Among their assets, I discovered files on over two dozen women and girls. Some had been put in front of the camera, while others had washed out in some way. The notes were very telling.

Name: Carlie O’Brien. Stage Name: Crystal. Age: 17. Hire age: 14 Status: Sent to brothel.

Name: Maria Castellanos. Stage Name: Mija. Age: 12. Hire age: 8. Status: Suicide by escape attempt.

Name: Michelle Carter. Stage Name: Baby. Age: 4. Hire age: 3. Status: Trainee—Uncooperative, may wash out.

Michelle Carter. That was the youngest entry, and the details seemed to match my little guest. Out of curiosity, I logged onto my own computer and got online to run some searches on her.

Within seconds I had news articles dating back almost a year ago and a brand-new fundraising campaign on a crowdfunding site. I started going through them, my eyes widening as I took in the full story of the little girl in my guest room.

Michelle Carter had been taken from negligent caretakers at a local daycare eleven months ago by a woman who had claimed to be her mother Alissa’s sister.

I sat back hard at the name.

It was no coincidence, this was her daughter. I just fucking rescued my old lover’s missing daughter without even realizing it.

I clicked on another article.

Ms. Carter is suing Little Tykes Daycare for negligence. Chicago PD have reassured us that they are doing everything they can to find little Michelle, but after eight months of looking, they’ve turned up nothing. The owners of the daycare, Darren and Misty Ivanov—

“Ivanov!” I looked them up and quickly confirmed that they were brother and sister-in-law to Darren. A family racket involving snatching kids. Over the last ten years, three others had been taken, but the other three disappearances had been pinned on non-custodial parents who had also vanished. Yet each one of those missing kids matched with someone on the Ivanovs’ employee list. The list I’d found only mentioned kids, there was no way of knowing how many other women had been trafficked by those sick fuckers for their movie business.

I frowned. Did Vasily know about Darren’s involvement? If his brother deserved a bullet, he certainly did too. I made a note to bring this to Vasily’s attention. That was one hit I would leap at the chance to complete.

The articles described Alissa as a single mom with no man or family in the picture to help her. She had struggled for almost a year trying to get her daughter back, and the fundraiser was just her latest attempt. I was guessing the police had been useless or worse in helping her out. The Ivanovs had operated under Vasily’s protection, and he had the local police in his pocket.

God. So that meant the Ivanovs used protection offered by my boss to keep poor Alissa from getting her kid back and getting justice.How she must have suffered, she and her kidnapped daughter, who had fought for herself even while tiny and mute with fear. At least now I had the chance to make some of what she’d gone through right.

And I was absolutely going to do that.

As for Vasily, if he found out and didn’t like how I’d handled the situation, he could kiss my ass.