Chapter 3 - What Volkov Needed
Vincent did not raise his voice.
That frightened Hannah more than shouting would have.
“What does that mean?”
They stood in the kitchen of the hidden apartment while rain blurred the Manhattan skyline.
Emma and Noah were asleep behind a reinforced bedroom door thirty feet away.
Hannah had spread the contents of the medical case across the granite island.
She pointed to one label.
“These aren’t ordinary kidnapping supplies.”
Vincent stared at her.
“I gathered that.”
“The tubes are for blood draws. These kits are used for compatibility screening.”
“Compatibility with whom?”
“I’m trying to find out.”
“Try faster.”
Hannah looked at him.
“Threatening me won’t improve the internet speed.”
For half a second Vincent seemed stunned.
Then, impossibly, the corner of his mouth moved.
Not a smile.
Something close.
Hannah opened her laptop.
Vincent watched code stream across the screen.
“You’re a nanny who fights like a federal tactical instructor and hacks private medical systems?”
“I’m not hacking a hospital.”
“What are you hacking?”
“A criminal.”
“That’s reassuring.”
She found the first connection twenty-three minutes later.
A private hematology physician in Connecticut.
The doctor’s files showed regular treatment for one patient whose identity had been disguised behind initials.
RV.
Roman Volkov.
Hannah read silently.
Her face tightened.
“What?”
“Acute leukemia.”
Vincent frowned.
“Volkov is sick?”
“Very.”
“So he wanted my children’s blood?”
“No. Blood type alone wouldn’t solve this.”
She scrolled.
“He has been searching for a highly compatible marrow donor.”
Vincent stared at her.
“Emma and Noah?”
“Possibly.”
“How would he know?”
Another search.
Another file.
Then Hannah went still.
Eight months earlier, Claire Moretti had undergone emergency treatment after the attack that killed her.
Medical samples had been collected.
Somebody had later paid a technician to access genetic compatibility data associated with the Moretti family.
Vincent read the screen twice.
“The hospital sold my wife’s records?”
“One employee did.”
“And the twins?”
“Follow-up records from their births contained enough information to flag them as potential family matches.”
Vincent stepped away.
He placed both hands on the counter.
Hannah watched the muscles in his shoulders tighten.
“He was going to take them apart to save himself.”
“We don’t know how far he intended to go.”
Vincent turned.
“They brought restraints into my house.”
Hannah had no answer.
Vincent’s eyes were darker than she’d ever seen them.
“I want Volkov.”
“Then don’t behave exactly the way he expects.”
“He came for my children.”
“And tonight he failed.”
“Because of you.”
“Yes.”
“Which means next time he prepares for me and for you.”
Vincent looked toward the bedroom.
There was dried blood near Hannah’s hairline.
Her white blouse was torn at one shoulder.
For nineteen days he had thought she was too delicate for his house.
Now he realized he’d mistaken restraint for weakness.
“Who hired you?”
Hannah closed the laptop.
“You did.”
“You know what I mean.”
“The agency you contacted is real. It simply has another division.”
“For people like me.”
“For children born into dangerous families.”
Vincent gave a humorless laugh.
“That’s a diplomatic way to describe organized crime.”
“I’ve protected diplomats’ children, witnesses’ children, corporate families targeted for extortion, and children whose parents operated on the wrong side of the law.”
“And you don’t care?”
“I care about children.”
The answer came instantly.
“Adults make choices. Children inherit consequences.”
Vincent looked away.
That sentence landed somewhere painful.
“My wife used to say something similar.”
Hannah’s expression softened.
“Claire?”
“You researched her.”
“I research every household I enter.”
“She hated this life.”
“The criminal side?”
“All of it.”
Vincent walked toward the windows.
“She loved me before there was money.”
His reflection looked back at him.
“Back when I was a twenty-two-year-old idiot working for my uncle and pretending I wasn’t becoming exactly what she feared.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“I told myself I was building something safe.”
He gestured toward the locked apartment.
“That’s the joke, isn’t it?”
Hannah didn’t laugh.
“When Claire died, Emma and Noah were in the car.”
“I know.”
“I wasn’t.”
Vincent’s voice changed.
He didn’t sound like a feared man anymore.
He sounded exhausted.
“I sent another vehicle because I was supposed to meet her at dinner. I was forty minutes late because a shipment was missing and I thought business mattered.”
Hannah said nothing.
“If I’d been in that car—”
“You might be dead too.”
“Maybe she wouldn’t be.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ve spent eight months knowing it.”
Hannah crossed the room.
“Vincent.”
He looked at her.
“Your children don’t need you to punish yourself for surviving.”
“You sound like a therapist.”
“I’ve worked with traumatized children long enough to steal the useful parts.”
That almost earned a real smile.
Then a small voice came from the doorway.
“Daddy?”
Vincent turned.
Emma stood barefoot in one of his oversized T-shirts Hannah had found in a drawer.
Her rabbit hung from one hand.
“I had the dream again.”
Vincent froze.
This was usually where he failed.
Claire bleeding.
Dark windows.
Sirens.
Emma screaming for her mother.
Vincent had tried everything.
Holding her.
Reasoning with her.
Promising she was safe.
Nothing worked.
Then Hannah whispered, “Go.”
Vincent looked at her.
“What?”
“She asked for you.”
He approached his daughter.
Emma’s eyes filled with tears.
“I saw Mommy.”
Vincent knelt.
Every instinct told him to call Hannah over.
Instead he remembered.
Five things.
“What can you see?”
Emma blinked.
“What?”
“Five things, sweetheart.”
She stared at him.
Then around the room.
“You.”
“Good.”
“Hannah.”
“Good.”
“The big window.”
“That’s three.”
“The couch.”
“Four.”
“My rabbit.”
Vincent swallowed.
“That’s five.”
Emma’s breathing slowed.
“Four things you can touch.”
“My rabbit.”
She touched Vincent’s sleeve.
“You.”
By the time they reached one thing she knew was true, Emma had stopped crying.
She put both arms around his neck.
“You always come back.”
Vincent closed his eyes.
Hannah turned away to give them privacy.
That moment changed something more important than anything that had happened in the garage.
Because Vincent suddenly understood what Hannah had been doing for nineteen nights.
She hadn’t replaced him.
She’d been teaching him how to come back to his children.
An hour later Emma was asleep again.
Vincent returned to the kitchen.
Hannah was studying financial records.
“I want out.”
She glanced up.
“Out of what?”
“This.”
He pointed vaguely toward a world larger than the apartment.
“My children are targets because of the empire I built.”
“You can’t dismantle it overnight.”
“No.”
Vincent pulled out a chair.
“But I can dismantle the parts that make them targets.”
Hannah studied him.
“Volkov won’t let you.”
“Volkov isn’t going to have much influence when I’m finished.”
“There he is.”
“Who?”
“The man everyone warned me about.”
Vincent leaned back.
“And yet you took the job.”
“I’ve always had questionable judgment.”
For the first time, he laughed.
Quietly.
It startled both of them.
Then Hannah’s screen flashed.
Her face changed.
“What?”
“I found a payment.”
“From whom?”
She rotated the laptop.
The money had moved through three shell companies before reaching an account controlled by Michael Caruso.
Vincent’s jaw hardened.
“He took money too.”
“It looks like it.”
“So the threats to his family were a lie.”
“Maybe not entirely. But he was being paid.”
Vincent stood.
“Where is Michael?”
“Your surviving security team detained him at the estate.”
“I need him alive.”
Hannah lifted an eyebrow.
May you like
“You were considering something else?”
Vincent ignored that.
