The Message from the Grave

My name is Vera Nikolaevna Petrova. I am sixty-four years old, and until last fall, I thought I understood the world. I believed in the sanctity of family, in the unwavering bond between a mother and her children, in the natural order of things where parents sacrifice for their offspring and are cared for in return during their twilight years.

What happened to me turned my entire life upside down and forced me to reconsider everything I held sacred. This story is a warning, because what happened to me can happen to anyone, especially if you have children who have suddenly started to care a little too much about your future—or more precisely, about your assets.

The Funeral

October 23rd was a dank, gray day, as if nature itself was grieving alongside me. A fine, chilling rain fell steadily on the old Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, and the bare branches of the ancient trees swayed in the wind like skeletal fingers reaching toward a slate-gray sky. I stood by the freshly dug grave, wrapped in my old black wool coat, feeling an emptiness inside me so vast and consuming it felt like it had swallowed my soul whole.

My husband of forty-two years, Nikolai Petrovich—Nick to everyone who knew him—was gone. Or so I believed.

The funeral was strangely quiet, strangely small for a man who had lived such a full life. Only our children were there: our son Andrew, thirty-eight, a lawyer with his own small practice, standing stiffly beside his wife Mariah; and our daughter Chloe, thirty-five, an accountant for a mid-sized firm, clutching her husband Ian’s arm. A couple of neighbors had come out of politeness—the Volkovs from the third floor, the elderly Sokolov woman from across the hall. And my dear friend Antonia, who’d known me since university and had been there for every major moment of my life.

But that was all. For a man who had worked as a senior engineer at the Elektrostal plant for thirty-seven years, who had been respected by colleagues and supervisors alike, who had mentored younger engineers and served on the plant’s safety committee, the absence of his former workmates felt like a glaring hole in the proceedings.

“It’s strange that no one from the plant is here,” I whispered to Andrew as I took a handful of damp earth for the final farewell, the traditional Russian gesture that felt both ancient and freshly devastating. “Your father worked there for almost four decades. Where are Pavel Ivanovich and Sergei? Where’s the delegation from the engineering department?”

Andrew’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly before he responded. “We called everyone, Mom,” he said, his voice low and carefully neutral. “But you know how it is now with the economic situation. The plant’s been struggling. People are working overtime, can’t get away. They all sent their condolences.”

I nodded, wanting to believe him, but a small, sharp splinter of unease lodged itself somewhere in the back of my mind. Nick had stayed in touch with many of his old colleagues even after his retirement three years ago. They met for chess in Gorky Park every second Sunday of the month without fail. Pavel Ivanovich had been at our kitchen table just two weeks ago, drinking tea and arguing with Nick about the best defense against the Sicilian opening.

The sound of wet earth thudding against the coffin lid echoed like hammer blows. Each impact felt like a physical strike to my own heart. My children stood on either side of me, supporting my arms, murmuring words of comfort that washed over me without penetrating the fog of grief that enveloped me like a shroud.

I noticed, with the strange clarity that grief sometimes brings, that Chloe kept dabbing at her eyes with an expensive lace handkerchief, but when I looked closely, I saw no actual tears on her cheeks. Andrew kept glancing at his watch, his thoughts clearly somewhere else, his foot tapping an impatient rhythm against the muddy ground.

“Mom, let’s go,” Chloe urged as the gravediggers began their work in earnest, their shovels making rhythmic scraping sounds. “The wake starts in an hour. People will be arriving at the apartment soon.”

As I turned to leave, supported by Ian’s steady hand under my elbow, my phone vibrated in the pocket of my coat. It was an ancient push-button Samsung that Nick had given me for our fortieth anniversary, insisting that I didn’t need anything fancy, that this would last forever. The vibration felt abnormally loud in the cemetery’s quiet, as if the phone itself was shouting for attention.

I pulled it out with cold, fumbling fingers and looked at the screen.

My hands started to shake so violently I almost dropped the phone into a puddle. It was a text message. From a number saved in my contacts as “Nick – Husband.”

The ground lurched beneath my feet. The cemetery, the mourners, the freshly filled grave—everything tilted and spun. If Ian hadn’t been holding my arm, I would have collapsed right there on the wet grass.

Vera, I’m not dead. Don’t ask questions right now. They have been after us for a long time. Please, don’t trust our children. Find Michael. He’ll explain everything. I love you. —N

“Mom, what’s wrong?” Chloe cried out, rushing to my other side, her face suddenly animated with concern. “Are you sick? Your face is completely white!”

“My head is spinning,” I managed to mumble, shoving the phone back into my pocket with shaking hands, my mind screaming in confusion and disbelief. “Blood pressure, I think. The stress. Let’s just… let’s just go home.”

The phone felt like it was burning a hole through my coat, through my dress, searing itself into my skin. Whose cruel joke is this? I thought wildly. Am I going mad with grief? Is my mind fracturing under the weight of loss?

But even as I thought these things, a deeper part of me—the part that had lived with Nick for forty-two years, that knew the rhythm of his thoughts and the particular way he phrased things—recognized something in that message. The way he always signed his notes “—N” instead of his full name. The way he called me “Vera” in his most serious moments, never “Verochka” or “darling.” The specific phrasing “don’t ask questions right now” that he’d used countless times when working on complex engineering problems that required immediate action before explanation.

On the ride home in Andrew’s expensive German sedan—when had he bought such a car on a small-practice lawyer’s salary?—I discreetly checked the message again. It was real. The number was correct. I knew it by heart; I’d been calling it for decades.

But his phone… where was his phone? I suddenly realized with a jolt of clarity that I hadn’t seen any of his personal effects since he’d been taken to the hospital three days ago. Not his phone. Not the watch I’d given him for our thirty-fifth anniversary, an elegant Soviet-era Poljot that he’d worn every day since. Not his worn leather wallet with the faded photo of me and the children from 1995. Not his keys with the little brass goldfish keychain I’d bought him at the market for luck.

Where were all his things?

The Wake

Our three-bedroom apartment on Leninsky Prospekt, where we had lived our entire married life, greeted us with the heavy smell of funeral borscht and burning candles. The traditional foods had been laid out on the dining table covered with a white cloth—blini, kutya, boiled eggs, the ritual glass of vodka with a piece of black bread balanced on top for the deceased.

Neighbors and a few distant relatives had gathered, shaking my hand with practiced sympathy, offering the standard condolences: “My deepest sympathies,” “He was a good man,” “May his memory be eternal.” I moved through the rituals like an automaton, nodding, accepting embraces, my mind racing, the phone in my pocket feeling like it weighed a hundred kilos.

I watched my children as if seeing them for the first time through a stranger’s eyes.

Chloe, usually so emotional and expressive—she’d cried for three days when our old cat Pushkin died—was strangely composed now, almost businesslike. She moved through the apartment arranging food, directing Ian to pour drinks, her eyes dry, her movements efficient.

Andrew seemed distracted, impatient, constantly checking his expensive smartphone—another thing I suddenly noticed. When had he upgraded from the modest phone he’d had last year? He and Chloe kept exchanging glances, quick coded looks that seemed to communicate entire conversations. When they caught me watching, they would immediately change the subject or paste on concerned expressions.

“It’s strange that Michael Borisovich wasn’t here,” my friend Antonia said, settling into the chair beside me with a cup of tea, her weathered face full of genuine sorrow. “He and Nikolai were like brothers since their college days. I can’t remember a funeral in either family that he missed.”

Michael Borisovich was Nick’s best friend since their first year at the Moscow Engineering Institute. He was Andrew’s godfather, had been at both children’s weddings, had spent countless evenings at our kitchen table solving the world’s problems over chess and cheap cognac.

“I called him this morning,” Antonia continued, her voice dropping lower, “to tell him how sorry I was that he couldn’t make it. But Vera, he said he didn’t even know about the funeral. He said no one had called him.”

I felt ice water flood my veins. “Andrew,” I called out to my son, trying to keep my voice steady. “Did you call Uncle Misha?”

He visibly tensed, his shoulders going rigid for just a moment before he plastered on a smooth expression. “Of course, Mom. He said he couldn’t come. Some health issue—his blood pressure was acting up again, you know how it is at his age.”

“That’s very odd,” Antonia said, her sharp eyes fixed on Andrew. “Because when I spoke to him this morning, he told me he was feeling perfectly fine. In fact, he said he was planning to go fishing at his dacha this afternoon, that he’d been looking forward to it all week.”

Andrew’s face flushed slightly. He shot Antonia an irritated look that he quickly tried to disguise. “Well, maybe he was just being polite to you, Antonia Sergeevna. You know how men are about admitting illness.” He turned to me. “Mom, you need to eat something. You haven’t touched the food.”

Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place with an almost audible snap. The message from Nick’s phone. My children’s strange behavior, their lack of genuine grief. Nick’s best friend, supposedly not informed about the funeral. And now, caught in a lie about it.

Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

“Where are Dad’s things?” I asked suddenly, cutting through the murmur of conversation in the apartment. “His phone, his watch, his wallet? The hospital must have returned his personal effects.”

Andrew and Chloe exchanged a fleeting glance—quick, panicked, guilty.

“We took care of everything, Mom,” Andrew said, his voice too smooth, too practiced. “The hospital documents are all with me. The death certificate, everything you’ll need for the pension paperwork. The rest of his things… you know, the hospital staff recommended we dispose of items that had been in contact with the body. Something about chemicals they use in the morgue, potential contamination. They said it was standard procedure.”

I stared at him. “Your father died of a heart attack, Andrew, not of some contagious disease. What chemicals?”

“It’s just what they told us,” Chloe interjected quickly, too quickly. “We thought it was best not to burden you with those kinds of details during such a difficult time.”

“And his phone?” I pressed, feeling anger beginning to cut through my grief like a knife through butter. “What happened to his phone?”

“It was old and broken anyway,” Chloe said, her words tumbling over each other. “The screen was cracked, remember? It barely worked. They probably threw it out at the hospital. Who needs an old phone like that anymore?”

It was a lie. I knew it was a lie. Nick had been fiercely attached to that phone precisely because it was old and simple and didn’t require him to learn new technology. “It does everything I need,” he’d always said. “Makes calls, sends messages. What else does a phone need to do?” And I’d heard him using it that very morning, just before he collapsed—I’d been in the kitchen and heard his voice from the bedroom, speaking to someone in low, urgent tones.

The Terrible Realization

After the last guests finally left as evening fell, my children prepared to leave as well. The apartment felt too big, too empty, too full of ghosts.

“Mom, can you manage tonight?” Chloe asked, already pulling on her fashionable coat—Burberry, I noticed, when had she started wearing Burberry? “We’ll come by tomorrow morning. There are some important administrative issues we need to discuss with you.”

“What issues?” I asked, a knot forming in my stomach.

She hesitated, glancing at Andrew, who gave her a sharp look. “Well,” she began carefully, “there’s the apartment, the dacha by the lake… you’re all alone now, Mom. This place is too big for one person. And the stairs—what if you fall? We’ve been looking into options, and we found a wonderful assisted living facility. It has medical care, organized social activities, other people your age…”

“That’s for tomorrow, Mom,” Andrew interrupted, giving his sister a warning look that was supposed to be subtle but wasn’t. “Just rest tonight. We’ll discuss everything properly tomorrow.”

“But I don’t want—” I started.

“Tomorrow, Mom,” Andrew repeated firmly. “You’re exhausted. You’re not thinking clearly. We’ll handle everything. That’s what children are for, to take care of their parents.”

When the door finally closed behind them, I was left alone in the suffocating silence, surrounded by the detritus of the funeral wake—half-empty plates, burning candles, the pervasive smell of grief and formality.

I pulled out my phone and reread Nick’s message for what must have been the hundredth time, my hands shaking so badly the words swam on the screen.

Vera, I’m not dead. Don’t ask questions right now. They have been after us for a long time. Please, don’t trust our children. Find Michael. He’ll explain everything. I love you. —N

I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t understand how my husband could have sent a message from beyond the grave. But I knew one thing with absolute certainty: Nick’s last words were a warning. Don’t trust our children.

The Sleepless Night

That night, I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. I lay in our bed—the same bed we’d shared for forty-two years, where our children had been conceived, where we’d talked through every major decision of our lives, where just three nights ago Nick had kissed my forehead and said “Goodnight, Verochka” before turning off his bedside lamp.

I tried to make sense of the impossible. I thought about our life together, about our children, about the slow changes I’d noticed but dismissed.

We hadn’t been rich, but we had been comfortable and happy. We’d worked hard our whole lives—Nick at the plant, me as a high school mathematics teacher for thirty-five years before my retirement. We’d scrimped and saved to give Andrew and Chloe the best education we could afford. We’d helped them with their first apartments, with their weddings, with the down payments on their cars. We’d been proud of their success.

But in the last two years, something had shifted. The visits became less frequent, more perfunctory. When they did come, the conversations had a different quality—less about their lives, more about ours. Specifically, about my health and Nick’s. About how difficult it must be for us to manage such a large apartment at our age. About the maintenance costs of the dacha. About whether we’d made proper financial plans for the future.

Chloe had started bringing me vitamins. “Modern European supplements, Mama,” she’d said. “Much better than the Russian ones. They’re specifically formulated for heart health.” She’d insist I take them, standing there watching until I swallowed the capsules.

Nick had been suspicious. “Why does she need to watch you take vitamins?” he’d asked. “It’s strange.” After Chloe left, he’d sometimes make me tea with honey to “settle your stomach” after the pills. Later, I’d found several of the vitamin bottles in the trash—he’d been throwing them away, I realized now.

And Nick himself, in his final months, had changed. He’d become withdrawn, anxious in a way that wasn’t like him. He spent hours locked in his small workshop on our balcony, the converted storage space where he kept his tools and his soldering equipment. I’d hear him in there at all hours, tinkering with something, muttering to himself.

A week before he died, he’d taken my hands across the kitchen table and said, “Vera, if anything happens to me, you must find Michael immediately. Trust only him. Promise me.”

I’d been irritated, I remembered now with shame. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Kolya,” I’d said. “Stop being so morbid. You’re only sixty-six. You have years ahead of you.”

“Promise me,” he’d insisted, his grip on my hands almost painful.

“Fine, I promise. Now stop talking nonsense and eat your soup.”

Now, lying in our empty bed, his words felt like a prophecy. A warning I’d been too foolish to heed.

The Documents

The next morning, Chloe arrived early, before I’d even finished my morning tea. She was dressed for business in an expensive suit I’d never seen before, carrying a leather folder that looked professional and intimidating.

“Mom, I’m sorry to rush you, but we need to take care of these papers today,” she said, spreading documents across the kitchen table before I’d even invited her to sit. “For the inheritance, the pension transfer, the insurance payout. There are deadlines. If we miss them, you could lose thousands of rubles.”

Her haste was wrong. Her coldly efficient manner was wrong. This wasn’t my daughter’s gentle way.

“Let me read them first,” I said, reaching for the stack of papers.

“There’s really no need,” she said quickly, pulling them slightly away from me. “They’re all standard legal forms, full of bureaucratic jargon you won’t understand. I’ve already had Andrew review everything—you know he’s a lawyer. Just sign where I’ve marked with the yellow tabs, and we’ll handle all the details. That’s what we’re here for.”

“I’d like to read them anyway,” I insisted, pulling the papers toward me.

She sighed with audible impatience, her foot tapping an irritated rhythm against the floor. “Mom, I have a meeting at eleven. I really need to get these filed today. Just trust me.”

I was reaching for my reading glasses when my phone rang. An unfamiliar number, but a Moscow area code.

“Excuse me,” I said, standing up. “I need to take this.”

I went into the bedroom and closed the door. “Yes?”

“Vera Nikolaevna?” a man’s voice asked, older, gravelly, somehow familiar though I couldn’t place it. “This is a friend of Michael Borisovich. He asked me to call you. He says it’s urgent that you come to his apartment today. This morning if possible. He has something very important to discuss with you. Something about Nikolai Petrovich.”

My heart began to pound. “Tell him I’ll be there within the hour.”

I returned to the living room. “I’m not feeling well, Chloe,” I said, and it wasn’t entirely a lie—I felt sick to my stomach with dread and confusion. “My head is pounding. I can’t focus on complicated paperwork right now. Let’s do this another day.”

Her face flushed with barely suppressed anger. “Mom, this is important. You can’t just—”

“Another day, Chloe,” I said firmly, in the voice I’d used when she was a child refusing to do her homework. “I need to rest.”

She left in a huff, practically slamming the door, the unsigned documents clutched in her hands.

The moment she was gone, I threw on my coat and hurried out.

Michael’s Revelation

Michael Borisovich lived in an old building near Sokol metro station, a fourth-floor walkup that had him breathing heavily by the time we reached his door. He opened it before I could knock, his usually jovial face gray and haggard.

“Vera, come in, quickly,” he said, looking up and down the hallway as if checking for observers.

His apartment was cluttered with books and old furniture, the comfortable chaos of a lifelong bachelor. On the coffee table sat a laptop computer—unusual for Michael, who’d always claimed to hate technology—and a small box wrapped in brown paper.

“Sit down, Verochka,” he said gently, using Nick’s pet name for me, and I immediately burst into tears.

“Michael, I don’t understand what’s happening,” I sobbed. “I got a message from Nick’s phone. But he’s dead. I watched them lower him into the ground. What’s happening to me? Am I going crazy?”

“You’re not crazy,” Michael said grimly. “But you’re in terrible danger, and I’m going to tell you things you won’t want to believe.”

He handed me the brown paper package. “Nick gave this to me three weeks ago. He made me promise to give it to you only if something happened to him. He said if he died suddenly, I should wait until after the funeral, then contact you immediately.”

With shaking hands, I unwrapped the package. Inside was a small USB flash drive, an envelope addressed to me in Nick’s handwriting, and a simple push-button phone—not Nick’s regular phone, but identical to it.

“Read the letter,” Michael said quietly.

I opened the envelope. Nick’s familiar handwriting swam before my eyes.

My dearest Verochka,

If you’re reading this, then something has happened to me, and Michael has kept his promise. I pray that I’m wrong, that my suspicions are just the paranoia of an old man. But if I’m right, then you are in grave danger.

Our children are planning to have us declared mentally incompetent. They are working with a psychiatrist who has agreed, for money, to provide the necessary documentation. I have overheard their phone conversations—by accident at first, then deliberately, after I realized what I was hearing.

They need the medical diagnosis to take control of our assets—the apartment, the dacha, our savings, our pensions. They are deeply in debt, Vera. Andrew’s law practice is failing. He took out loans from dangerous people to keep it afloat. Chloe and Ian have been living far beyond their means, buying things they can’t afford.

But it’s worse than that, my love. I believe they’ve been poisoning me. The vitamins Chloe brought you—I had them tested by a chemist friend. They contain substances that mimic dementia symptoms. I’ve been pretending to take the pills she brings me, then throwing them away. But I think they’ve been putting something in my food or drink as well. I’ve been experiencing confusion, memory problems, tremors.

In my workshop, I installed hidden cameras and audio recorders. The footage is on this flash drive. I’ve recorded everything—their conversations, their plans. It’s all there.

The second phone is programmed with my number. If something happens to me, Michael will use it to send you a warning message, so you’ll know to come to him immediately.

Please, don’t confront them. Don’t tell them you know. They are desperate, and desperate people are dangerous. Take this evidence to the police. Trust only Michael.

I love you, Verochka. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I hoped I was wrong. I prayed I was wrong. But I couldn’t risk your safety by being silent.

Forever yours, N

I couldn’t breathe. The room spun. Michael pressed a glass of water into my hands.

“It’s true?” I whispered. “All of it?”

“Let me show you,” he said, and opened the laptop.

The Evidence

What I saw on that screen over the next two hours destroyed whatever remained of my world.

Footage from a camera hidden in our kitchen—I recognized the angle, it must have been in the old clock on the wall—showing Chloe adding drops from a small bottle into Nick’s teacup when she thought I wasn’t looking. The date stamp: five weeks before his death.

Audio files of phone conversations. Andrew’s voice: “The old man is getting suspicious. We need to speed up the timeline.” Chloe’s response: “I’m increasing the dosage. The doctor says another month at most.”

Another conversation: “What about Mother?” “Once Father’s gone, she’ll be easy. She trusts us completely. We’ll get her declared incompetent, put her in a facility, and sell everything. The apartment alone is worth fifteen million rubles.”

More footage. Ian, Chloe’s husband, searching through Nick’s workshop while we were out. Nick’s voice in another recording: “I caught Ian going through my papers today. He claimed he was looking for tools. They’re planning something. I need to move the evidence to Michael’s.”

A video of Chloe meeting with a man in a café—the timestamp showed three months ago. Audio from a hidden microphone in her purse: “Dr. Volkov, we need the psychiatric evaluation to say they’re incompetent. Progressive dementia, unable to make financial decisions. You’ll be well compensated.” The doctor’s response: “It will cost you two hundred thousand rubles. Half now, half after the documentation is filed.”

I watched my daughter, my own child, arrange for my husband to be slowly poisoned. I heard my son, the boy I’d nursed through childhood illnesses and supported through law school, discuss my future incarceration in a mental facility as if I were livestock to be disposed of.

My children had murdered their father. And I was next.

Michael held my hand as I cried, his own face wet with tears. “Kolya was my brother in everything but blood,” he said. “I wanted to believe he was wrong. I wanted to think it was impossible. But the evidence…”

“What do I do?” I whispered.

“My nephew, Viktor Sergeevich, is an investigator with the prosecutor’s office,” Michael said. “I called him this morning. He’s waiting for us.”

The Investigation

Viktor Miller was a man in his forties with kind eyes and the weary expression of someone who’d seen too much of humanity’s capacity for evil. He listened to my story without interruption, his face growing grimmer with each detail. Then he reviewed the files on Nick’s flash drive, making notes, occasionally asking clarifying questions.

“Mrs. Petrova,” he said finally, “this is more than enough to open a criminal investigation. We have evidence of conspiracy, fraud, and attempted… well, we’ll need to prove the poisoning. That will require an autopsy.”

The word hit me like a physical blow. “You mean…”

“An exhumation,” he said gently. “I’m sorry. I know how difficult this is. But to prove murder, we need to establish cause of death conclusively. We need toxicology reports that show the presence of poison in his system.”

The thought of disturbing Nick’s grave, of his body being cut open and examined like a laboratory specimen, made me want to vomit. But I thought about the message he’d sent me—his last act of love, his final attempt to protect me. He’d given everything to save me. Could I do less to get him justice?

“Yes,” I said. “Do it. Whatever you need to do.”

Viktor nodded approvingly. “Now, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to go home and act completely normal. You cannot let your children know that you suspect anything. Can you do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.

“You must,” he said. “We’re going to install hidden cameras and audio equipment in your apartment. We need to catch them in the act—attempting to drug you, attempting to get you to sign documents under duress, discussing their crimes. The video and audio evidence from your husband’s recordings will help, but we need current, verifiable evidence with clear chain of custody.”

“What if they hurt me?” I asked, suddenly terrified.

“We’ll have plainclothes officers monitoring at all times,” he assured me. “The moment you’re in danger, we move in. But we need to build the strongest case possible. These are serious charges. We can’t afford any procedural mistakes that could let them escape justice.”

The Performance

The next two days were the hardest of my life. I had to sit with my children—my husband’s murderers—and pretend everything was normal. Pretend I was just a grieving, confused widow.

Chloe came with more documents. “The vitamin situation,” she said with faux concern. “Mom, you really need to take these every day. The doctor recommended them specifically for your heart condition.”

What heart condition? I wanted to scream. I’m perfectly healthy. But instead, I obediently took the pills she handed me, waited until she left, and immediately spit them into a tissue that went into an evidence bag Viktor had given me.

She brought food: “I made your favorite, Mama—chicken soup. You need to keep your strength up.” I poured it down the sink when she wasn’t looking, my stomach churning at the thought of what might be in it.

She made me tea “for your nerves.” I poured it into the potted plant when she went to the bathroom. The plant died two days later.

Andrew came with more papers. I pretended to be confused, to have trouble focusing. “I don’t understand all these words,” I said, playing the role of the declining old woman they expected to see. “You explain it to me.”

He did, patiently laying out how I would sign over financial power of attorney to him, how I would voluntarily enter a care facility “just temporarily, until you’re feeling stronger,” how I would sell the apartment to help pay for my care.

“Why do we need to sell the apartment?” I asked, genuinely curious how he would justify it.

“Mom, the maintenance costs are too high for you to manage alone. And the place is worth so much now—wouldn’t you rather have that money working for you, earning interest, ensuring your care?”

Ensuring your debt repayment, I thought. Buying off the dangerous people you borrowed from. But I said nothing, just nodded weakly.

Through it all, I was aware of the tiny cameras hidden in the air vents, the audio recorders in the lamps. I was aware of the plainclothes officers parked on the street below, of Viktor monitoring everything from a van around the corner.

I watched my children’s eyes—cold, calculating, impatient. Waiting for the drugs to fully take effect. Waiting for my mind to crumble. Waiting to harvest my assets like I was a field ready for harvest.