To me vengeance, I will repay. Alexander Kolosov

the two men and felt how each of them, touching her, frantically released endorphins, which greedily absorbed her aura, ‘But, first, I would like to talk to you.

      – With us two or with us one?” specifies Pronyakin.

      – With you, Kirill Aleksandrovich. I have nothing to say to Mr. Zhuk.

      – And how do you know me?” surprised Pronyakin.

      – Who doesn’t know you after the scandal you caused at the wake of the collector Milyutin? The whole of Moscow is talking about you. I am detective Anna Zhuk, I was hired by the family of the deceased to represent their interests in the case to protect the honor and property of the family. I would like to ask you, how did you find out about the will, do you have a copy or the original and do you have evidence of the murder of Milyutin by his family?

      – Oh, oh, oh, why did the damned charming girl have such a prosecutorial tone? I felt at once like a defendant in court,” tried to joke Proniakin, but seeing Anna’s determined mood, decided to get out of harm’s way.

      – I’ll go away for a few minutes, and Andrei will take my place,’ said Pronyakin in a curt voice, and beckoned the detective after him, whispering in his ear conspiratorially, ‘Keep her here till I get away. She needn’t know that we have nothing but suspicions.

      – So are you going to tell me everything you know?” reminded Anna, displeased that Pronyakin was whispering to her ex-husband and was clearly up to something.

      – I’ll tell you everything I know, but not until I get back,” Promised Pronyakin and ducked into the corridor leading to the restroom, at the very end of which there was an emergency exit to the street.

      Left alone, the former spouses gave vent to their feelings and began to quarrel, continuing the verbal altercation interrupted several years ago.

      – Are you still as secondary as your ridiculous cowboy hat? Still playing John

      Wayne, even though you’re not a figure!

      – Do you want me to dress like Sherlock Holmes? Smoke a pipe and wear caps and tweed jackets? You’re still the same fury in heels. All you can do is bite

      people.

      – Well, let’s just say I won’t bite you You’re not even human.

      – True. Then who am I?

      – You are an imbecile. Your intelligence is equal to that of a monkey.

      – Whoever said anything about macaques, not you. The monkey and the glasses. And by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed, you were tricked. Pronyakin’s gone and he’s not coming back.

      – Your office? And where will you take him then, since there’s nowhere lower to fall? Only the subway is lower!

      – Madam,’ a customer at the next table interjected, ‘you don’t drink on the subway. It’s forbidden. Only the pit on Khokhlovka is lower. There’s no roof over your head there at all.

      Anna looked at the uninvited interlocutor with such scalding contempt that he, with the words: “I’m leaving, I was wrong,” hurried to move to the far corner of the liquor store, away from Anna.

      – It’s amazing,’ Andrew adjusted his hat, as if to see if it was in place, ‘It’s been a long time, and you still hate me. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that you took this case just to annoy me.

      – You’re right, as always. At the same time, I’ll make some money, help the widow get rid of the parasite.

      – Jesus Christ, Anna, fear God. Do you really think that Pronyakin is lying? If there was a will, that’s easy to establish. And if Pronyakin isn’t lying about the will, he’s not lying about anything else. At the very least, Miliutin was threatened. Otherwise, why would he hide from his family?

      – Because he was manipulated. He’s schizophrenic. Didn’t you know that? Somebody told him they were going to kill him, and he believed it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Pronyakin. And rest assured, I will unravel this intrigue, get to the truth, and expose the scoundrel.

      Chapter 4

      – It’s a little immodest, but so sweet that I want to tell,’ says Andrei, looking at her with laughing eyes, ‘I will tell you the name, and you will confirm or deny it to me.

      – God, how interesting. I’m all a ball of nerves,” readily agrees the notary’s assistant, with whom Andrei is openly flirting.

      – Two buddies fell in love with a fallen girl. Who they met in a brothel. And they made a wager between them. If the girl chooses one of them, the other will

      bequeath all his possessions to her chosen one, and he will go to a monastery. Can you imagine? As they say, don’t stand in the way of high feelings.

      – It’s crazy how romantic,” the assistant was intrigued.

      – And so it happened. The lovers were married, and the groom’s friend disappeared for several years until they received the news that he had been killed in Kamchatka. He did not go to the monastery, but took a job as a ranger in a bear reserve at the very edge of the earth, where he was mauled by a bear cub while rescuing a group of tourists from Moscow. It was these tourists who told our couple when they returned home that all of his property now belongs to them after his death. But, unfortunately, the original will perished along with its owner in Kamchatka: it was drenched in the hero’s blood. He kept it on his chest as a memory of his oath all this time. And now, I, a private detective, am forced to go around all the notary offices of our city and ask pretty notary’s assistants like you, whether you have not met the surname Milyutin when executing documents?

      – Milutin, Milutin?’ The notary’s assistant, pale as an angelic shadow, with brightly painted lips and thickly tinted eyes, wrinkled her convex forehead and suddenly exclaimed joyfully, ‘I remember! We had Milutin two weeks ago. He

      was so funny and disheveled. I thought he wasn’t himself. His eyes were running and his hands were shaking. He was making a will.

      – And what is the record that the will was notarized and the state duty was paid?

      – Of course, in the civil registry. He wasn’t alone, by the way-this crazy guy. He had a lawyer with him, a flamboyant one, trying to calm him down.

      – And why did you, dear Oksana, think he was a lawyer?

      – And he called himself that. As if it were a privilege.

      – Isn’t that him, by any chance?” Andrew took out his smartphone and showed the girl the photo of Orlovsky.

      – He, he,’ she exhaled happily, and looked at the detective in surprise, ‘Only our crazy man is hardly the hero you are looking for. Yours died in Kamchatka, and made his will several years ago. You should make a written request to all the notary’s offices and wait for an answer.

      ***

      All night long, Anna was catching mice. That’s easy to say, catching mice. It’s not an easy thing to do, and like any job, it requires a lot of intelligence. Try to get the information you need from the darkest corners of the Internet, the web of information flows, where it is easy to get lost, constantly moving the mouse on the table and looking at the numbers and lines on the monitor. But Anna is no stranger to looking for a needle in a haystack. She hacked into one website, hacked into another, went through the firewall, and got her way – she found out everything