Page 101 of Sexting the Pakhan

Kirill breathes through his mouth. “I don’t know.”

I hit him. His body swings slightly from the hook.

Stepan watches from the freezer door, arms folded, saying nothing. Pavel is near the counter with the file. Dima stands behind Kirill, close enough that Kirill knows what happens if I step away.

Kirill breathes hard through his nose. “I don’t have it,” he says.

I flex my right hand. The skin over my knuckles has split again. “You keep saying that,” I say.

“Because it’s true,” Kirill says.

Pavel lifts one invoice from the stack. “The Tuesday shipment left Yard Seven with twelve sealed cases. It arrived with ten.”

Kirill says, “That was loading error.”

Pavel places another paper on top of the first. “The March shipment was short by one.”

Kirill looks at the floor.

Pavel continues, “Two missing in April. One in May. Six cases total.”

Stepan looks at Kirill and says, “That’s a very patient loading error.”

Kirill licks blood from his lip. “I only signed what they gave me.”

“You signed because Lenkov let you,” I say.

That gets his eyes up. There it is.

Lenkov is the night supervisor at Yard Seven. Eight years under me. Quiet, steady, invisible enough that men stopped watching him. The thefts were too careful for Kirill alone. A driver could lose one case. A loader could hide one mistake. Six over three months meant someone inside the gate was helping.

Kirill swallows.

I step closer. “Where is the stash?”

He shakes his head.

Dima sighs from the door. “This is getting sad.”

Kirill looks at him quickly, then back at me. “I don’t know.”

I hit him in the stomach this time. The chair rocks back and nearly tips before Dima catches it with one hand and shoves it upright again.

Kirill coughs until he gags.

I walk to the small sink in the corner and turn on the tap. The pipes groan before cold water comes out. I wash my hands slowly, letting the blood run pink into the drain.

No one speaks while I clean my knuckles. That silence usually does more than another punch.

I dry my hands with a rough paper towel and turn back.

Kirill is watching me now with the look I wanted from the beginning. Not defiant. Not clever. Just scared enough to understand the difference between pain and ending.

I return to the chair in front of him and sit.

“Listen carefully,” I say. “I know you stole from me. I know Lenkov opened the gate logs for you. I know the cases were moved out in a laundry van that doesn’t belong to any laundry service in this city. What I don’t know is where you put them.”

Kirill’s lips tremble.