Nikita Von James «90% PRO»

She also met a boy. His name was Samir, and he was gentle in a way that terrified her. He brought her tea without asking. He noticed when she hadn’t slept. He once said, “You look like you’re carrying something heavy. You don’t have to carry it alone.”

Not in a diary—diaries could be read, could be used. She wrote in code, on loose sheets of music paper, hiding the words between the staves of Chopin nocturnes. Her mother, who drank sherry from morning until the world blurred into something bearable, never noticed. Her father assumed she was just practicing piano.

“You sound just like your mother,” Leonid whispered. “She was brave too.” nikita von james

“Papa,” she said.

Nikita did not attend. She was in a small flat in Edinburgh, drinking tea that Samir would have made better, staring at a blank sheet of music paper. She had stopped playing piano years ago. But she still wrote. She also met a boy

Nikita did not cry. She added a name to her list.

Her father, Leonid Von James, was a fixer. Not the heroic kind. The kind who made problems disappear. People, mostly. But also evidence, loyalties, memories. He worked for a man named Sokolov, whose face was as smooth and empty as a porcelain mask. Nikita had seen him once, at a charity gala. He had patted her head and said, “Such a polite girl.” His fingers had been cold. He noticed when she hadn’t slept

She sat across from him. Placed a folder on the desk. Inside: seventeen names, five locations, three dates. And one more thing—a photograph of Sokolov, taken from a distance, shaking hands with a man whose face was blurred but whose insignia was not. Interpol.