Nikita did not attend. She was in a small flat in Edinburgh, drinking tea that Samir would have made better, staring at a blank sheet of music paper. She had stopped playing piano years ago. But she still wrote.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” she said. And it was true. Leonid Von James was already a ghost. He just hadn’t stopped breathing yet. nikita von james
“You sound just like your mother,” Leonid whispered. “She was brave too.” Nikita did not attend
She waited.
Nikita didn’t flinch. “No. Mama was kind. I’m something else.” But she still wrote
Not the official story—the one about imports and logistics, the one that bought them the house and the piano and the annual trip to Switzerland. No, Nikita learned the real story from the blood on his cufflinks. The kind that doesn’t wash out entirely, no matter how good the dry cleaner.
She sat across from him. Placed a folder on the desk. Inside: seventeen names, five locations, three dates. And one more thing—a photograph of Sokolov, taken from a distance, shaking hands with a man whose face was blurred but whose insignia was not. Interpol.