Chapter 1: Shattered Happiness
The blue glass elephant swayed in Elena Andreevna's trembling fingers, catching and refracting the dim light of the office. Detective Anna Sviridova found herself admiring how blue flickers danced across the walls—as if pieces of sky had penetrated this room saturated with grief and fear.
"Sofi brought it from summer camp last year," Elena Andreevna's voice, hoarse from tears, broke the silence. "She said, 'Mom, can you believe it? Just one more left. One more elephant—and we'll have happiness.' Someone had told her about the seven elephants…"
Anna glanced at her watch: 3:40 PM. Outside, a fine November drizzle was falling, turning the streets into mirrors reflecting the gray sky. Two weeks. It had been exactly two weeks since sixteen-year-old Sophia Velichko never made it to school.
"Tell me once more how that morning went," Anna tried to speak gently, though everything inside her tightened at the realization that this woman would be reliving the worst day of her life for the tenth time.
Elena Andreevna slowly placed the elephant on the table. Its trunk pointed toward the door, as if showing a path to salvation that could no longer exist.
"I saw her off as usual. Sofi wore her new jacket—white, with a hood. I even thought: maybe it's too light-colored for autumn? But she was so happy about that jacket… We hugged at the doorstep, and I wished her a good day. She smiled and said, 'I love you, Mom.' Just said it, for no reason…"
Elena Andreevna fell silent, smoothing out non-existent wrinkles on her skirt. Anna knew the hardest part was coming.
"At 7:38, I checked the app. We always tracked each other through a special mobile application; we had agreed to it after the threats began. Sofi wasn't where… she wasn't where she was supposed to be at all. I messaged her…"
"Through a messenger app?" Anna clarified, though she already knew the answer. She had read this detail in the reports dozens of times.
"Yes. I just asked, 'Where are you?' She replied, 'In class.' But I could see… I could see she was somewhere else. I called her homeroom teacher—Sofi wasn't at school. She never skipped classes, never! And then… I immediately knew that what we had feared all this time had happened."
Anna pulled a photograph from the folder: a gray Toyota Camry without license plates, captured by a surveillance camera at the intersection of Spring and School Streets. The timestamp on the image: 7:35.
"You mentioned that Viktor Mikhailovich sold his car a month ago?"
"Yes, a black BMW. He said business wasn't going well, that he needed money. I thought it was strange at the time. He always claimed everything was excellent…"
Elena Andreevna suddenly froze, staring at the photograph. Her fingers reached for the elephant again but stopped halfway.
"That car… I've seen it before. Several times, near our house. I thought it belonged to one of the new neighbors…"
Anna made a note in her notebook. Another detail for the collection of evidence showing that Sophia's abduction wasn't a spontaneous decision.
"Tell me about the cameras you found in your apartment."
Elena Andreevna flinched as if struck. "I discovered the first one by accident. I was changing the shower curtain, and it fell out—so small and black. Then I started looking deliberately. I found three more: in the bedroom, in the hallway, and in the kitchen. And voice recorders… There were voice recorders everywhere. He knew every word we said, every step we took. And I… I never noticed…"
There was a knock at the door. Major Sergei Dorokhov, Anna's partner, appeared in the doorway. His face didn't bode well.
"Sorry to interrupt. Anna Vitalyevna, could I have a word?"
Anna apologized to Elena Andreevna and stepped into the corridor. Dorokhov handed her a folder marked "Top Secret."
"Just came in from Tver. You were right—this isn't the first time."
Anna opened the folder and shuddered. From a twenty-year-old photograph, a young Viktor Mikhailovich Astakhov looked back at her. Except back then, his name was different—Viktor Rogov. And by that time, he already had the murder of a fifteen-year-old girl behind him.
Returning to the office, Anna saw that Elena Andreevna remained sitting, frozen like a statue, tears rolling down her cheeks. The blue elephant continued casting reflections on the walls, but now they seemed like fragments of shattered happiness.
"Elena Andreevna," Anna called softly. "I have more questions. About Viktor Mikhailovich's past. It's important."
The woman slowly raised her head. "You know, he once told Sofi: 'When we find the seventh elephant, we'll make our most important wish.' And now I think: maybe he already knew? Knew that there would never be a seventh elephant…"
Outside, the rain intensified, beating an irregular, uneven rhythm on the windowsill. Anna looked at her watch: 4:20 PM. The time that had forever divided this family's life into "before" and "after."
