Page 202 of Sexting the Pakhan

For one full second, the room empties out. Not silence. Not thought. Just the hard white shock of seeing what should not be possible.

I turn back toward Stepan.

His face has changed. He looks stricken.

“What the fuck happened here?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says at once. “I just got here.”

His voice is rough, like he ran hard to make it in time and still missed something important.

I want to believe him. That’s the problem.

For years, if Stepan said he had it handled, I stopped worrying. If Stepan said a door was secure, I slept. If Stepan said a man was loyal, I took that as fact. He has stood beside me too long for distrust to come naturally.

But Mila is gone.

Nadia is still asleep.

The window is open.

I turn back to the room. The blanket on Mila’s bed is half on the floor. The curtain above the open window lifts and falls in the cold air. There was no screaming, no struggle loud enough to wake Nadia, no broken glass, no shot fired. Whoever took her knew exactly what he was doing. He came in quiet, took the child he wanted, and left the other untouched.

I feel Stepan step closer behind me. “Ruslan,” he says, lower now, “this is bait.”

I laugh once under my breath, but there’s nothing amused in it. “No shit.”

He doesn’t answer. Because we both know what comes next.

It is obvious bait. It is also Mila.

I kneel beside Nadia’s bed for half a second and touch her shoulder lightly. She stirs, frowns in her sleep, then settles again. Thank God. I pull the blanket back over her and stand.

“She stays here,” I say.

“With who?” Stepan asks.

I look at him.

He takes the meaning at once. Hurt flashes across his face, quick and real. I hate that I notice. I hate that some part of me still wants to trust him as before.

“I said I just got here,” he says.

“And I heard you.”

His jaw tightens. “You think I had a hand in this?”

“I think my daughter is missing,” I say.

He sighs. “I came looking for you, didn’t I?”

“Did you trace my phone?” I ask.

“I was worried,” he says.

“You know there’s no place for emotion in our world,” I tell him.

That ends the argument.