Chapter 4 - The Red Scarf
Two days later, Elena noticed a man watching the diner.
He stood across the street beneath a gray umbrella. A red scarf showed above his coat.
Elena’s breath caught.
She grabbed the black card and called Mikhail.
He answered immediately.
“Elena?”
“There’s a man across the street wearing a red scarf.”
“Lock the door.”
The man saw her watching and turned away.
Elena locked the entrance as Mikhail instructed. By the time security arrived, the stranger was gone.
One of the guards reviewed the diner’s exterior camera footage. The image was grainy, but Misha later identified the man as the person who had led him from the hotel.
His name was Anton Petrov, a former Volkov International employee fired for stealing company information.
Mikhail returned that evening.
“This is no longer a random incident,” he told Elena. “Someone believes you know something.”
“I know a child came into my diner hungry.”
“That may be enough.”
He wanted to place security outside the diner.
Elena refused.
“Armed-looking men will scare away the few customers I have left.”
“They would be discreet.”
“Your version of discreet arrived in three black SUVs.”
Despite himself, Mikhail smiled.
Then he noticed a bucket catching water from the ceiling.
“How long has the roof leaked?”
“Long enough for me to name the bucket.”
“This place is unsafe.”
“This place is home.”
Mikhail walked around the diner, studying the cracked tiles, old wiring, and worn booths. For the first time, he seemed to see the building not as a property on a development map but as a place filled with history.
Photographs covered one wall. Elena’s mother stood beside customers, employees, neighborhood children, and firefighters after a blizzard.
“My mother fed people when they couldn’t pay,” Elena said. “She believed no one should face the worst night of their life on an empty stomach.”
Mikhail looked at the photograph.
“My wife believed something similar.”
Elena softened.
“What happened to her?”
“A car accident.”
Mikhail’s answer was quiet, but Elena sensed a wall behind it.
Before she could ask more, his phone rang.
His expression changed as he listened.
Anton Petrov had been found unconscious in an abandoned warehouse. He was alive, but terrified.
May you like
Before losing consciousness again, he had whispered one name.
Victor Sokolov.
