Page 93 of Immaculate Corruption (Romanoff Bratva)

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A rental car is waiting when we get to the airport. We don’t have any luggage, so we climb inside, enter in the address, and start driving.

Arya is quiet, but I don’t try to distract her now. She needs time to think. To prepare for whatever we may find.

The lead is flimsy, at best. A strange couple with a surprise two-month-old? It isn’t exactly a smoking gun. But it’s the best we’ve got.

The GPS tells us we’re within a few minutes of our destination. Arya sits forward in her seat. She looks out the window, studying every face that we pass. I can feel nervous tension rolling off of her.

“Listen to me, Arya.”

“I’m not in the mood for a lecture, Dima.” She’s a little pissed at me after my stunt on the plane. The nerves aren’t helping, either.

“All the more reason to listen,” I insist. “We are here to scope out what’s going on, okay? We won’t be using any unnecessary violence. Nothing that could hurt Lukas.”

Arya nods. Her shoulders relax.

“We will watch the house for a bit, see what we can see. If there’s an opportunity to go inside and snoop around, we’ll take it. And if the baby is Lukas…”

Honestly, I hadn’t truly considered the possibility until now. It’s… a lot.

“If it’s Lukas…?” Arya presses.

I park the car in a spot across from a tall, narrow home just across the street and look at Arya. “If it’s Lukas, then we’ll take him home. By any means necessary.”

Her eyes go glassy for a moment, but she blinks back the emotion. “Okay. It’s a plan.”

And we wait.

I’m planning to watch the house for at least an hour before I make any alternative plans. Maybe if there’s no movement in that time frame, we will knock on the door or try to see if anyone is inside.

We only have to wait fifteen minutes.

Arya gasps and points towards the house. “The door opened! They’re coming out.”

The woman Arya showed me in the photo last night—short and stout with brown hair—comes out of the house with a small child cradled against her chest. The balding man behind her is carrying a stroller.

Both adults have big, wide smiles. They laugh when the husband struggles setting up the stroller, and the woman lowers the baby inside—just slowly enough that we get a good, long look at the baby.

Arya’s voice breaks when she speaks. “That’s Lukas. That’s my boy.”

I feel the same tug in my chest. One glimpse was all it took for me to recognize mymalyshka.

It’s a struggle not to jump out of the car, gun down the two people who have my son, and grab him.

“There are too many neighbors,” Arya says, reading my mind. “We can’t take him right now.”

I nod in agreement.

“So what do we do?” she asks.

The couple starts pushing the stroller down the sidewalk and around the corner, happy and clueless as can be. As soon as they’re out of sight, I turn off the engine.

“Let’s get inside before they come back.”

Casually, Arya and I walk across the street and up the steps to the house. To my surprise, the door is open.

“They didn’t even lock it behind them.” I shake my head, dumbfounded.

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