Disclaimer: I don't own the Grisha Trilogy and its characters – it belongs to Leigh Bardugo. I do not own the Shadow & Bone TV series, which was developed by Eric Heisserer for Netflix and based on Leigh Bardugo's books.
This is a modern, no powers AU.
It was one of the worst parts of Pavel's job, delivering bad news.
The widow was weeping, tears glistening on her cheeks, eyes red, one arm cradling the bump that was only just starting to show.
No seatbelt had turned Malyen Oretsev's crash from what could have been a few minor sprains and a bump on the head to a dead-on-impact situation.
"I always told him to wear it," she choked out as if she couldn't decide between sorrow and anger, "I told him."
She dissolved into tears again and Pavel found himself the subject of half a dozen glares.
He still wasn't sure exactly how the house had filled up so quickly – Alina Oretsev had only made one phone call, but there were maybe people there in less than twenty minutes.
A beautiful red-head had a comforting arm around the grieving widow. Other men and women milled around, some offering condolences that sounded oddly unemotional considering the tragic nature of the death, while the rest wandered through the house, mostly gravitating toward the handsome, dark-haired man who had been introduced as Aleksander Morozova, the deceased's uncle.
Pavel knew that name, was aware of the whispered rumours of mob ties despite what seemed like a perfect legitimate, wildly successful business empire.
There was no evidence that this was anything other than a tragic accident, though. No informant chatter that anyone in particular had it out for Mal Oretsev. And Pavel wasn't about to rock the boat by making accusations without any evidence.
Morozova was a personal friend of Mayor Nikolai Lantsov, after all, and the last thing Pavel wanted was to end up fired and blacklisted, especially when there wasn't yet a shred of proof that Oretsev's death had been some kind of hit.
Having delivered the news and ensured the widow had plenty of support around her, Pavel agreed to return in a few days for a longer chat, giving Mrs Oretsev some time alone to grieve a little before she had to talk more about the accident.
As he went to leave, he saw Morozova step forward and put a gentle hand on the widow's shoulder, thumb rubbing circles on the bare skin of her neck. She smiled at him softly through her tears.
Pavel turned and one of the intimidating men in dark suits showed him out.
But, for some reason, he couldn't get the image of Morozova touching Alina Oretsev's neck out of his head for hours after he had returned to the precinct.
As he did for any such case, Pavel looked at the facts, tried to work out if there was anything that might suggest this wasn't a simple accident.
It was likely he was wasting his time, but there was just something about this incident …
He re-read his notes, recalled the pre-accident summary that one of his colleagues had compiled for him.
Mal Oretsev and Alina Starkov were orphaned around the same time, meeting when they were both fostered by a woman named Ana Kuya at ages seven and six respectively.
It read like a cliché. Childhood sweethearts married as soon as Alina turned eighteen. Poor as church mice, living in a tiny apartment while they attended Os Alta University.
Her true passion was art and cartography, but she studied business because she knew it would give her more stable job prospects. He studied sports science with no real ambition to enter the field for work – long term planning wasn't exactly his strong suit, which made Alina sigh sometimes.
They were supported by her academic and his football scholarships, as well as the three part-time jobs she had. Mal didn't have time for a job, too busy captaining the football team to success and spending his spare time hunting in the nearby forest with some friends.
They were just about to graduate when Aleksander Morozova tracked Mal down. Morozova had no surviving family and was apparently delighted to find out that Mal was his nephew, the son of an older sister he hadn't seen in almost twenty-five years, who had died when Mal was a toddler.
Suddenly, the Oretsevs were out of their grimy apartment and installed in a fancy brownstone that was really far too big for two people. Their student loans were paid off, groceries delivered and utilities paid by Morozova.
Alina graduated summa cum laude. She tried to insist on using her degree to get a job to support her and Mal, but Morozova wouldn't hear of it. He encouraged her to do something she loved, found her art classes, pointed her in the direction of the half a dozen orphanages in and around the city that he donated to so that she could volunteer at a few of them.
Mal barely managed to graduate (he'd always been better at sport than academics) and made no effort to get a job once it was clear his uncle would take care of the bills. He spent even more time hunting with his friends than he had during his degree, and ran up a few gambling debts across the city that Morozova stepped in to help pay off.
Alina fell pregnant four and a half months before the accident.
Oddly enough, it was always Morozova or Genya Kostyk (an employee of Morozova's who had quickly become Alina's best friend) who accompanied her to any doctor's appointments or pregnancy classes. Her husband seemed to have little interest in his unborn child.
The picture painted was perhaps not the best of marriages. Still, Pavel knew that all relationships went through difficulties.
They were young and the pregnancy may well have been a surprise that Alina's husband wasn't expecting or entirely ready for.
It was clear that Mal Oretsev wasn't a man used to responsibility. His sports prowess had carried him through his degree and his uncle's money kept him afloat as he partied his way through life.
Still, he'd not even been twenty-five. There was plenty of time for him to grow up … or there should have been.
In suspicious circumstances, they often looked at the spouse first.
However, Pavel couldn't see Alina Oretsev being in any way involved in her husband's death. She had seemed genuinely devastated when he broke the news to her, almost unable to talk through her tears.
And there certainly wouldn't have been a financial motivation for her. Her husband had died with a few outstanding debts (cleared immediately by Morozova) and that was about it. The brownstone was in Morozova's name, as was the car Mal used.
She might well have expected to be unceremoniously evicted from the property she had called home for a year. However, Morozova had made no move to send her away. He clearly considered both Alina and her child to be his family, happy to continue supporting them despite his nephew's death.
Pavel tried to look at other people, but he just wasn't able to work out any kind of motive.
Mal seemed to have had an easy charm, getting along fairly easily with almost everyone. Those who didn't particularly like him appeared to be more indifferent than hostile. His debts were always cleared quickly by Morozova. There were no disgruntled friends or exes coming out of the woodwork. Nobody seemed to have benefited at all from his death.
And yet … something bugged Pavel about this case.
Before he went back to the brownstone, Pavel decided to interview some of the people closest to the Oretsevs.
Zoya Nazyalensky shrugged as she examined her perfect nails, "I didn't really like the guy. He spent far too much time staring at my chest, and right in front of Alina too. He was the boss' nephew, though, so I refrained from breaking his jaw."
"Mal was … not the brightest guy," Genya Kostyk told him, "great at sports but he had apparently had trouble in some of his core classes. He had a bit of a gambling problem too – Aleksander had to bail him out a few times. Alina is a darling, though, so sweet – we're very lucky to have her. She even managed to persuade Aleksander to let me throw him a birthday party, after I've spent the last six years attempting, and failing, to talk him into it."
Nina Zenik-Helvar had never actually met Mal Oretsev, "but my husband Matthias wasn't a fan. Alina, though," she grinned, "that girl makes the best damn waffles I've ever eaten."
"My wife's a bit of a waffle fiend," Matthias Helvar added, looking at her with an adoring smile, "Alina made a friend for life when she served up her triple chocolate brownie waffles."
"They were like a taste of heaven," Nina murmured dreamily.
"She really enjoys waffles," Matthias added with a slightly apologetic look.
Ivan Kaminsky simply glared and refused to answer any questions. His husband Fedyor, a far more cheerful character, only said that they had both been required to extract Mal from a number of casinos when he'd had a little bit too much to drink and started making reckless bets, and that they therefore never held the man in particularly high esteem, especially when they'd caught him entwined with other women a few times.
"Alina is a sweetheart," Fedyor added when Pavel asked about the widow, "she did a beautiful portrait of Vanya and I for our anniversary – we've got it hung above the big fireplace at home."
"It really is shocking how many ways there are to make a car fail," David Kostyk said earnestly, "some of them are surprisingly easy even for a person with no experience around cars."
He then went on to expound, at length, on how simple it really was for a car accident to occur.
"Forgive him," Genya murmured indulgently, "my husband is a mine of information and he does tend to go off on a tangent. Mal's accident had him on a five-hour research bender and he's been scaring us all silly with statistics ever since."
"Mal always wore a seatbelt," Oretsev's friend Mikhael insisted, "he nearly went headfirst through a car window when we were stupid teenagers and he was so careful after that."
His friend Dubrov nodded in agreement, "I don't know why Mal wouldn't have had his seatbelt on. He used to nag both of us about it whenever we went out."
"Well, it's true he hooked up a few times with a girl called Ruby," Mikhael admitted when Pavel wanted to know if Oretsev had been unfaithful, "but Alina wasn't aware and it didn't mean anything. Mal loved Alina."
"She's a mousy little thing," Ruby tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder, "and she was always clinging to Mal. He constantly complained about it, although it got a bit better when they graduated – she spent a lot of time volunteering at some orphanages, I think, which must have been such a bore. And yeah, it's true that Mal and I slept together occasionally – what can I say, if a man isn't being satisfied in bed then I don't see anything wrong with him finding a little entertainment elsewhere."
"It is Alina I am most concerned about now," Morozova watched Pavel with a gaze that seemed to pierce right into him, "she's in such a fragile state and needs a lot of looking after. I'm sure Mal would be pleased to know what good care we're all taking of her."
"What can you tell me?" Pavel asked the forensic team.
"Car seems absolutely fine," one of them said, "no signs of tampering."
"Nothing suspicious," the other agreed, "the vehicle is almost new, only about a year old."
"Case closed then, I guess," Pavel murmured, as he thought about the clean tox report he'd just had back.
Still, he'd still have one final interview with Mrs Oretsev.
Just in case.
When Pavel arrived back at the brownstone, it was much quieter than it had been on his first visit. Only Zoya Nazyalensky and Nina Zenik-Helvar were there with Alina Oretsev, as well as Matthias Helvar and jovial man called Jesper Fahey.
"It's just," Alina, cradling her stomach protectively, sighed as Pavel sat across from her with a cup of coffee in his hand, "he won't be here to see the baby grow up."
"Don't worry, Alina," Nina patted her on the hand, "we'll all make sure the baby knows plenty of stories about his father."
In the background, Matthias and Jesper nudged each other and shared a grin, as if there was something amusing about Nina's words.
"I know this is difficult, Mrs Oretsev," Pavel said after a few minutes of small talk, "but I'm afraid I need to ask you a little bit about your relationship with your husband."
"What do you mean?"
He took a breath before he dared to ask his question, "did you love your husband, Mrs Oretsev?"
"Of course I did," she sounded horrified and hurt, "what kind of question is that?"
He watched her carefully and noticed there was something almost rehearsed in both her words and the way her voice trembled. It might get him raked over the coals by his boss later, but he decided to push her a little.
"All married couples experience ups and downs, Mrs Oretsev. I just want to get a sense of your home life, to see if there might have been anything distracting your husband, an issue he was worried about, or –"
"I think that's quite enough," Zoya smoothly interrupted him.
Lawyer, Pavel remembered, a shark in the courtroom – her reputation preceded her.
"I'm not sure why you're interrogating Alina like this," Zoya glared at him, "and I know that Aleksander will not be pleased to hear that she is being treated like some kind of common criminal."
"I apologise, Mrs Oretsev," he nodded at Alina, "I am simply trying to get to the bottom of this incident."
"There is no mystery to solve here, Detective Petrov," Zoya said sharply, "the reports have all concluded that this was simply a tragic accident."
Pavel didn't know how the woman in front of him had got hold of forensic and coroner reports that had only just been completed, but it didn't really surprise him. Zoya Nazyalensky struck him as someone who was used to getting what she wanted exactly when she wanted it.
"I'm very sorry that I can't tell you anything more, Detective," Alina's voice was quiet but firm, "however there really is nothing to say. Mal wasn't perfect, none of us are, but he was my husband."
He repeated his apologies, feeling chastised by the women in front of him.
It was clear he had overstepped, imagining a conspiracy where the was none.
He was probably just letting the rumours of Morozova's mob ties get to him.
And with how bad my instincts seem to have been recently, he thought to himself, I'm probably wrong about that too.
Helvar and Fahey showed him out, frowns on their face that showed their irritation at his interrogation of Oretsev's widow.
"If you have any further questions," the tall, broad Helvar mentioned as they opened the front door, "we'd appreciate if you went through Ms Nazyalensky. We don't want Alina upset – Aleksander would be ... most irritated if that happened."
With that, he was summarily dismissed, and he muttered a prayer to the saints that he wouldn't end up fired for angering some of the city's most powerful people.
As he turned to return to his car, Pavel glanced through the window and realised that the group had now been joined by Morozova.
He paled, wondering if the man had been upstairs and had overheard the conversation.
His boss was absolutely going to kill him.
Morozova was sat down next to Alina Oretsev, his arm casually slung over her shoulder.
She was leaning into him, face pressed into his black woolen jumper, while his other hand was playing with her hair.
Pavel did not think about that, refused to let his mind process what it was seeing.
Better to pretend he'd simply gone straight to his car.
The funeral was a private affair, men in suits at the church entrances to prevent any unwanted guests and halt any paparazzi that were brave (or stupid) enough to try and intrude.
Pavel passed by, not letting himself ponder too deeply on why he'd deliberately taken the longer route back to the precinct that day.
And if he caught a glimpse of two dark haired mourners who looked rather like the deceased's widow and uncle, locked in a tight embrace just outside the church, well … he didn't see their faces and it probably wasn't Alina Oretsev and Aleksander Morozova anyway.
Two months after the accident, Pavel ran into Alina Oretsev at a fundraiser for some of the city's orphanages. She greeted him politely when she spotted him.
He smiled amiably in return. His boss had never spoken with him about his conduct during his visit to see Oretsev's widow, and he was thankful that she hadn't lodged a complaint about his behaviour.
"I wasn't sure I would manage tonight," she confided, "it's all been so difficult since Mal … but this is such a good cause. I was an orphan myself, you know."
"I remember," he said, thinking of the notes in his now-closed file.
"Aleksander donates already," she continued, "he's so generous. But the fundraisers make an even bigger difference. I can't visit the children as much as I used to now," she gestured to her very rounded stomach, "so I want to help with whatever else I can."
"It's a wonderful cause," he agreed.
She looked over his shoulder then, and waved at someone, "sorry, I've just spotted Nina and she promised she'd sneak in some miniature waffles for me – they only ever seem to serve miniscule portions at these things and this baby wants far more than a tiny fillet of salmon, a spoonful of mash and three green beans."
"Of course," he nodded, "good evening, Mrs Oretsev."
"Oh, it's Starkov again now," she corrected him, her eyes suddenly seeming to shine with tears, "it was getting so hard to hear Mal's surname every time someone spoke to me, I'm afraid I just couldn't bear it anymore."
That was a little strange, but he knew that he shouldn't judge the way a person grieved, especially after such an unexpected accident, so he simply nodded again and watched her head across the room towards Nina Zenik-Helvar.
Pavel continued to wander through the crowd, not entirely comfortable among the city's elite.
The precinct always received a few invitations to this sort of event, but the majority of the fundraiser guests made more money in a year than Pavel would see during his lifetime. He was very much aware that his rented suit was nothing to the tailored creations most of the men wore.
It was when he made a wrong turn while trying to find a bathroom that he saw the two of them.
Morozova had Alina pressed up against the wall of an empty corridor and he was mouthing at her neck as she moaned, while his hands started to hike her the skirt of her glittering black and gold dress up.
"Mmm, Sasha … we need … Sasha … we have to stop. You're supposed to be giving a speech in two minutes."
Morozova sighed deeply, kissed her briefly but tenderly, "I suppose you're right, milaya."
Then he moved his hands to her stomach, "and how is our son tonight?"
Pavel missed Alina's response, too focused on the words he had just heard – our son … our son.
He covered his face with his hands as he stepped back around the corner to ensure they wouldn't spot him standing there.
What a fool he had been.
There had been a theory, buried deep in the back of his mind, that Morozova might have taken advantage of Alina Oretsev's grief to seduce the younger woman.
He hadn't imagined this, though, an affair that must have been going on for at least four months prior to Oretsev's death, quite likely longer.
And it was so blatantly, obviously clear now that Mal Oretsev's death was the furthest thing from an accident.
Too convenient, for the young man to have died during the early stages of his wife's pregnancy. He wondered if Morozova had moved out of his penthouse apartment and into the brownstone within the last few weeks, or if he had been there since the day of the car crash.
Of course, Pavel had absolutely no proof at all, and he knew without a doubt that there would never be any – someone like Morozova was far too clever to get caught, meticulous enough to ensure his men cleaned up after themselves.
What could he do?
Mal Oretsev was dead and nothing was going to bring him back.
There was no evidence. The incident had been ruled an accident and no judge would be foolish enough to re-open this particular case.
If Pavel went to his boss with his suspicions, then he would, at best, be laughed out of the door or, at worst, have an unfortunate and fatal accident himself.
He'd always known that some people could get away with murder. And he'd always sworn he wouldn't be one of the detectives who let something go out of fear.
Now, though, he realised he'd been idealistic. He had a wife and two small children at home and he absolutely refused to take chances with their safety, especially when the chances of Morozova being convicted for anything were slim to none.
So, he'd keep his mouth shut and he'd hate himself a little bit for it.
Pavel saw the wedding announcement a year later, the gushing article that spoke of two people united in their grief building something new together, and of a man who adopted his new wife's son without hesitation, determined to be a true father to the boy.
He couldn't deny that they looked truly happy together in the photograph that accompanied the article. No one would even think to suggest that they weren't truly in love.
Pavel picked up the photograph of a grinning Mal Oretsev from his old case file and forced himself to stare at it for a good two minutes.
Then he ripped the photograph to shreds, pushed the article into the bin and went to join his family for dinner.
There were some things that it didn't do to dwell on.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it.