The monitors whir to life, one showing stocks, another showing various camera angles of the estate, another one open on my emails.
One from the Pakhan catches my eye immediately.
Send the information. Exile underway only upon receipt of satisfactory evidence of treason.
Satisfactory evidence.
I sigh and glance over to Victoria who is chewing thoughtfully on a piece of fruit.
“They need evidence of what your uncle has been doing. I suspect he stole the diamonds from someone else in the Bratva, but I can’t confirm that unless I see them.”
Her jaw stills and her head tilts forward slightly as she forces herself to swallow.
I know what I’m asking. Those diamonds are her only way out if it turns out I’m lying and she somehow ever manages to get past me. They are her security, her leverage, and I’m asking her to give them over to me.
“What about everything else? Everything I did? I stole from the Bratva too.”
I think on it for a moment as I watch her closely. It’s clear in the way her breathing has changed slightly that she is nervous.
“The Pakhan will forgive that, due to the circumstances. He was also friends with your father so there may be an element of regret that he didn’t keep a better eye on what was happening to you after your parents passed.”
Her eyes drop from mine at the mention of her parents, and she places the plate back on the table with more care than necessary, like she’s afraid of breaking something fragile. The room shifts subtly when that happens. The air thickens. I recognize it immediately, the instinct to retreat inward, to make herself smaller when grief is touched.
“I didn’t know your father well,” I say quietly, choosing each word with care. “But I knew what kind of man he was. Old Bratva. Honor before greed. Loyalty before power. And my mother always spoke highly of yours.”
She doesn’t look up, but her shoulders tense, then slowly ease, as if hearing that costs her something and gives her something at the same time.
“They would’ve hated what Boris became,” she says at last.
“Yes,” I agree. “They would have.”
I push back from the desk and lean against its edge, keeping my posture open, nonthreatening. This isn’t an interrogation. If I push now, I risk losing her.
“The diamonds,” I continue calmly, “aren’t the only evidence. They’re just the easiest. And they will need returning at some point. But what matters more is what you know. Where he hid things. Who he stole from. How he covered it up.”
She lifts her head slowly, eyes sharp now, calculating. The thief. The survivor. The woman who planned her escape down to the minute, but not her freedom.
“And if I give you all of that,” she asks, “what stops you from handing me over once you’re done?”
I meet her gaze without blinking. “Nothing,” I say. “Except the fact that I won’t.”
She studies my face, searching for a crack, a lie, the place where my certainty might falter. She won’t find it. I’ve already crossed the line she’s afraid of. I crossed it the moment I told Boris no.
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” I add. “And I don’t trade people.”
Her breath catches and the weight of that statement lands between us, heavy with implication.
“You’d go to war over this,” she says quietly.
“Yes.”
“For me.”
“Yes. For what he did to you,” I add. “And for what he did to the Bratva. Those two things align because you inadvertently brought light to them.”
Silence stretches. The kind of quiet where decisions are made.
She nods once. “The stuff I stole, mostly watches, a few bracelets, is all in my room in his house. He will have ransacked that by now, likely found them and put them in the safe or used them against me.”
