"Take me with you."
"No." His response comes immediately. "You stay here. Keep working. Act normal."
"They'll connect me to you eventually. I'm your sister. I work at the track where it happened."
"Not if you keep quiet and don't give them reason to look closer." He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a small black phone. "It's a burner and it's clean. Use this if you need to contact me. Don't call from your regular phone anymore."
I take the device, feeling its unfamiliar weight. "How long will you be gone?"
"However long it takes to clear my name or identify who's trying to destroy me." He slings the bag over his shoulder and walks to where I sit. "Zoya, listen to me. This will pass. I had nothing to do with Petrov's death. Someone set me up, and I'm going to prove it."
The conviction in his voice should be reassuring, but fear has already taken root in my chest. The Bratva doesn't wait for proof before acting on suspicion.
"What if you can't prove it?"
"Then I disappear permanently, and you pretend you never had a brother." His hands frame my face, fingers rough against my cheeks. "But it won't come to that. I'm innocent, and innocence has a way of surfacing eventually."
Innocent. The word sounds strange applied to Damir's activities, but I understand what he means. He didn't kill Petrov. He didn't taint his own product. Someone else orchestrated tonight's events, and he's become their scapegoat.
"I need more information. I need to know who your enemies are, who had access to your supply, who benefits from your destruction."
"You need to stay out of this completely." His voice hardens. "Go home. Go to work Monday. Count money and balance books. Act normal."
"Normal doesn't exist anymore. Not after tonight."
"It has to exist. Your safety depends on it." He moves toward the door, our conversation concluded. "Follow my instructions, or risk making everything worse."
He reaches for the door handle, and I know that once he leaves, I might never see him again. The thought galvanizes me. I stand and grab his arm.
"Don't leave me in the dark about this."
For a moment, his expression softens. He looks at me the way he used to when we were children, when he promised our mother would stop drinking and our father would come home.
He leans down and presses his lips to my forehead—a gentle kiss that feels more like goodbye than reassurance.
"I love you, little sister. Remember that."
Then he's gone, the door closing behind him with finality. I hear the lock engage, then his footsteps retreating down the hallway toward the elevator.
I remain standing in his living room, surrounded by the careful order he's built around himself. The burner phone sits in my palm, its black screen reflecting my face in miniature.
An hour passes. Then another. I sit on his couch and wait, hoping he'll return with better explanations or clearer plans. But the door doesn't open, and the apartment grows colder as the heating system cycles down.
Finally, I gather my coat and let myself out, locking the door with the spare key he keeps hidden above the frame. The hallway feels different now—charged with potential threats, heavy with unspoken danger.
The drive home passes in a blur of neon and anxiety. I clutch the burner phone and replay our conversation, searching for details that might matter later. But Damir revealed only fragments while keeping crucial information to himself.
My apartment welcomes me with familiar darkness. I don't turn on the lights as I move through the rooms, checking locks on windows and doors. Everything appears normal, but normal has taken on new meaning in the span of a single evening.
I brew coffee and sit at my kitchen table with my laptop. The news websites load slowly, each page revealing preliminary details about the incident at Podsolnukh Racetrack. Alexei Petrov, twenty-eight years old, found dead near the main entrance. Cause of death pending investigation.
The morning news will carry more information. The investigation will follow every lead. And somewhere in that investigation, they'll trace the connection back to Damir.
My phone—my real phone—remains silent on the table. No messages from my brother. No calls from work. No indication that anyone else knows about our conversation or the bag he carried when he walked out the door.
But they will know. Eventually, they'll trace the connections and ask the questions that lead to uncomfortable answers.
When that happens, I'll need more than his instruction to ‘act normal’.