“No, Dad. Let me finish.” She turned around. Tears glistened in her eyes, but her voice was firm. “I have to get through this. I have to understand. Accept it. Otherwise, I’ll go crazy.” She went to her father and sat beside him. “He was the first man I trusted completely. After Dima. Do you remember how hard it was for me? For three years, I didn’t trust anyone. And then Artem appeared. And I thought: here he is. The one I’ve been waiting for. The one who will never betray me.”
Nadezhda sniffled.
“Sweetheart…”
“And you know what the scariest part is?” Daria continued. “I still remember how he looked at me. With love. With tenderness. It felt so real. How can someone pretend like that? How can you play a role every day, every minute? He’s not a robot. He’s a person. Is there really nothing inside him?”
Stepan was silent. He didn’t know what to say. In thirty years of work, he had met people like that—empty inside, capable of mimicking any emotion. But he couldn’t explain it to his daughter.
“You’ll get through this,” he said at last. “You’re strong. Stronger than you think.”
“I don’t feel strong. I feel used, thrown away, like trash.”
“You are not trash. You are my daughter. And you will survive. And you will live on. And he… he will answer for everything.”
Daria rested her head on her father’s shoulder.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
They sat like that until late into the night. Three people, bound by blood and pain. Three people, preparing for the most important battle of their lives.
In the morning, Stepan and Saveliev went to see Zhanna. Her building—an old panel five-story—looked as dreary as the neighborhood around it: peeling paint, broken asphalt, a smell of mold in the entryway. Her apartment was on the third floor.
Saveliev rang the bell. The door didn’t open right away. When it finally cracked open on its chain, Stepan saw a thin, gaunt face. A woman in her fifties, although her documents said forty-seven. Smoke-damaged hair, yellow fingers, deep wrinkles.
“What do you want?” The voice was the same. Hoarse, from smoking.
“Zhanna Petrovna?” Saveliev asked, showing his badge. “Major Saveliev. We need to talk.”
The woman turned pale. Her eyes darted to the stairs, looking for an escape route.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“We know about Kira. And about Olga. And about Svetlana.”
Zhanna flinched, as if struck.
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do. And you have a choice. Either you talk to us now, off the record. Or we come back with a warrant and talk officially. In the second case, you go down as an accomplice to three murders. In the first, there’s a chance for a deal.”
Zhanna was silent. Her hands were shaking.
“Let us in,” Stepan said. “Please.”
Something in his voice made her falter. She looked at him intently, assessing him.
“You’re the father, aren’t you? The girl’s father?”
“Yes.”
Zhanna closed her eyes.
“My God,” she whispered. “God, forgive me.” And she unlatched the chain.
Zhanna’s apartment was as worn out as its owner. Old furniture, faded wallpaper, the smell of stale tobacco smoke. Dozens of cigarette butts in a tin can on the windowsill. On the wall, a faded photograph of a beautiful young woman. It took Stepan a moment to realize it was Zhanna herself, twenty years ago.
She had them sit on a sagging couch, while she remained standing by the window, nervously fiddling with the edge of the curtain.
“I knew you’d come one day,” she said quietly. “I knew it. I waited every day.”
“Then why didn’t you leave?” Saveliev asked. “You could have run, hidden.”
Zhanna gave a bitter smile.
“Where to? With my record? With my sins?” She shook her head. “And besides… running means admitting guilt. And for so many years, I convinced myself I wasn’t to blame. That I was just making documents. Just helping a man start a new life. And what he did with that life was no longer my concern.”
“You knew,” Stepan said. It wasn’t a question.
“Not at first.” Zhanna lit a cigarette, her hands trembling. “Not at first. He came to me six years ago. Handsome, charming. Said he had problems with his documents. His ex-wife was harassing him. Threatening to kill him. He needed new documents, a new name, a new life. I had just gotten out of prison, I needed the money. He paid well.”
“How many sets of documents did you make for him?”
