Chapter 7 - The Reckoning at Sadovaya
The full scope of the disaster crashed down upon them like a collapsing ceiling. There was no money. There was no clean escape to Sochi. Nina hadn’t executed a brilliant master plan to save her family—she had been the willing pawn of a petty criminal who had used her desperation, her vanity, and her access to Igor’s life to harvest nearly half a million rubles in untraceable cash.
The only thing left in the room of any value was the Scandinavian mink coat hanging from the wardrobe rail.
Igor slowly walked over to his sister. He towered over her, his hands curling into tight, white-knuckled fists. For a terrifying second, Olga thought he was going to strike her. The rage vibrating from his body was palpable, a violent storm that had been brewing across years of unappreciated sacrifice.
“You gave our life... to a pimp?” Igor choked out, the words tearing from his throat like broken glass. “You gave our blood, our sweat, the apartment I promised my wife... to a man who sells stolen car parts behind the market?”
“He loved me!” Nina screamed, shielding her face with her arms. “He said we were going to open a salon! He said Artem would have a father!”
“He played you!” Igor roared, kicking the suitcase. The fake money fluttered through the air like grotesque gray snow. “He played you because you’re stupid, vain, and greedy! And you took me down with you!”
“Enough!” Olga’s voice cut through the room like a gunshot.
Both of them stopped. Igor turned to her, his chest heaving, his face contorted in agony.
Olga pressed the call button on her phone.
“Police department, district four,” a tinny voice answered from the speaker. “State your emergency.”
“Olga, don’t!” Igor lunged toward the phone, but Olga took two steps back and held up her hand with an intensity that rooted him to the spot.
“Good evening,” Olga said into the receiver, her voice as steady as steel. “My name is Olga Mikhailovna Petrova. I am calling from Room 14, 28 Sadovaya Street. I wish to report a grand financial fraud and identity theft amounting to four hundred and seventy-one thousand rubles. The perpetrator of the fraudulent withdrawal is here, along with evidence of an organized fencing operation involving an individual named Semyon.”
“Olga, please!” Nina wailed from the floor, crawling toward her on her knees, clutching at Olga’s boots. “Think of Artem! He’s innocent!”
“Artem is innocent,” Olga said, looking down at the weeping woman without a single shred of mercy. “Which is why he deserves to be raised by someone who won’t teach him that stealing from his own family is an act of virtue. Officer, please dispatch a squad car immediately. The suspect is an imminent flight risk.”
“Unit dispatched,” the operator responded. “Remain on the line.”
Olga hung up the phone and slipped it back into her pocket.
Igor looked at her as if she were a stranger who had just walked into his life from another planet. “You really did it. You destroyed my sister. You destroyed my family.”
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“No, Igor,” Olga said, walking toward the wardrobe and lifting the Scandinavian mink coat off the rail. She draped the heavy, luxurious garment over her arm like a dead carcass. “Your family was already rotted to the core. I just turned on the lights.”
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