A BOWL OF SOUP

KAIN

The alerts had started hours before Tatiana wandered into the kitchen.

My phone had three separate notifications in the span of forty minutes.

The news cycle had finally caught up to what I'd done. 

I read them in the security room with my coffee going cold beside me, scrolling through the coverage without expression.

Massacre at Morozov Estate. Mayor Viktor Morozov and family killed in targeted attack. Police investigating.

Beloved Mayor Morozov among five dead in what officials are calling a professional assassination. Godfather Aleksander Solakov calls for immediate justice.

Exclusive: Solakov vows to personally fund investigation into the killing of his oldest friend.

That last one had a photograph. Solakov at a press podium, in a grey suit. He stood composed, his eyes carrying the right measure of grief. 

Kain had looked at the photograph for a long time.

Solakov was Viktor's godfather to Tatiana, which made him the natural face of outrage. 

He had the connections to make that performance credible. 

I picked up my phone and pulled up the most recent coverage. Solakov had given an interview to two major outlets in the past eighteen hours. 

Both pieces used the same framings.

A political figure loved by his city, a family destroyed by unknown criminal elements. The investigation was being treated as a priority. A senior detective had been assigned. Warrants were being discussed.

I set the phone down and looked at the monitors.

The youngest Morozov daughter, Tatiana, 22, was not among the victims and has not been located. Police are treating her as a possible witness or secondary target.

Another alert.

Possible witness.

Well, she was currently asleep in the east wing, two floors above me, in a room I'd checked three times tonight because the perimeter had flagged a vehicle on the coastal road that turned out to be a fisherman returning late. 

I sat in the dark for another twenty minutes, reading the alerts as they came in. 

Then I got up and went to the kitchen and made the broth from my mother's recipe.

I make it from memory like I always do, measuring nothing, adjusting by instinct the way my she taught me.

I was eleven when she stopped being able to cook on her own. Her hands shook too much. 

She would stand beside me instead, correcting me when I add too much salt, telling me when to lower the heat, when to leave it alone.

 I thought then that I would remember that smell for the rest of my life. I was right.

Lana's broth. 

Roasted garlic, good stock and fresh thyme. 

The proportion of black pepper she said I could never write down because it depends on the day and the pot and who I was feeding it to.

I made it for Sonya, once. She asked me what it was and I told her the name of it in Russian. 

I couldn't explain what the name meant in a way that translated properly. 

So I gave up and she just called it the good soup. 

And that was enough.

I am not thinking about Sonya when I hear Tatiana’s footsteps in the hallway.

I heard her the moment she left her room. I have spent enough years in places where you learn to listen for soft movement. 

It is information that could save a life, or end one.

I wait to see what she will do.

She stands in the doorway for so long that I make a bet, in my head, that she will return to her room without stepping into the kitchen. 

I lose against myself. 

She takes the bread without asking. I notice her looking at the bread from across the kitchen. I wait to see if she will take it.

She does without asking, which makes me sure. 

She is hungry.

I put the soup at the far end of the counter. 

She takes it anyway.

She keeps her back to me while she eats. And I steal a glance at her looking out the window. 

She needs to believe she is not being watched so I let her. 

When she puts the bowl in the sink and leaves, I stand in the kitchen for a few more minutes. The broth left in the pot is going cold. I pour it out and rinse everything down and turn off the last light.

I go back to the security room and check the perimeters and then check them again, and then sit in the dark and watch the monitors until the sky outside the cliffside windows go from black to deep grey that comes just before dawn.

Then I pull up the external perimeter feed and open Solakov's most recent statement alongside it, two windows on the same screen. 

Solakov's face on one side. The empty coastal road on the other.

I read the new statement through.

"Viktor Morozov was my oldest friend. His family was my family. I will not rest until the person responsible for this is brought to justice. I owe him that. I owe his daughter that."

His daughter. 

Interesting

I closed the window and went back to work.