Chapter Five - Vivienne
The folder sits on my desk for three days before I open it.
Not because I’m afraid of what’s inside, but because I already know it isn’t real. The moment Alexei slid it across the table, I recognized the play. The file was bait: a test to see if I’d run to the wrong person, if I’d try to use the information to my own advantage. Maybe he expected me to slip, to show my hand too early.
I don’t.
When I finally spread the papers across my desk, I read them carefully, marking inconsistencies the way I used to highlight law school texts. Numbers that don’t match dates. Witness accounts that don’t line up with travel logs.
It’s dressed in authenticity, but the seams show if you know where to look. I don’t tell a soul. I don’t even breathe the details into my own apartment.
When he asks me for my analysis a week later, I give him the only answer that wins: “The information is unstable. It can’t be trusted. My recommendation is to control it, quietly, until you know which parts are poison and which parts are truth.”
His eyes linger on mine, gray and sharp, searching for cracks. I give him none.
That earns me something I hadn’t expected… access.
Suddenly, I’m not just the lawyer who dismantled Sergei’s trial. I’m being invited into rooms I never thought I’d see, sitting at the edge of long tables covered in ledgers and thick folders, listening as men speak in Russian too quick for me to follow. Sometimes Dimitri translates in low tones at my side; sometimes he doesn’t bother, letting me sit in the tension and silence.
Either way, my presence is tolerated now. More than tolerated.
The first time I shadow a full meeting, I can feel my pulse in my throat. The room smells of cigar smoke and leather, the table wide enough to seat ten. Men shift papers, lean into maps, murmur names of cities I know only from the news. Moscow. Odessa. Prague.
I sit quiet, pen poised, pretending to take legal notes. In reality, my phone tucked under the table records every word. Each file they pass me, I memorize. Every ledger, I glance over twice, committing numbers to paper later in the solitude of my apartment. Every memo I touch feels like a fragment of the empire I swore to dismantle.
It terrifies me, how close I am to the wolves now. Every gesture carries weight: the way someone pours vodka, the way a hand rests too long on a folder, the way Alexei leans back in his chair, silent but commanding. Power is a language in this room, spoken without words, and I’m learning its grammar piece by piece.
The danger is constant, thrumming under my skin. One wrong look, one question too sharp, and I’d be done. Yet some twisted part of me feels drawn to it: the adrenaline, the razor’s edge. It’s intoxicating, the sense that every second matters, that every breath is survival.
Alexei notices me more now. He doesn’t hide it. During briefings, his gaze finds mine, lingering longer than it should. He studies me like he’s waiting for me to crack, like he’s testing how long I can hold the stare before looking away. I never do.
Once, as I move past him after a meeting, he lingers in the doorway, close enough that his cologne cuts through the smoke and vodka. He doesn’t touch me, doesn’t speak, but I feel his presence like heat against my skin. I keep my stride steady,my mask smooth, but when I reach the stairwell my hands are shaking.
I tell myself it’s strategy. That he’s measuring me, pushing to see how far I’ll bend. That everything he does is deliberate, calculated. That’s what men like him are. Predators circling, always searching for weakness.
So why does it feel like something else when his eyes hold mine longer than anyone else’s?
Why does it feel less like suspicion and more like… curiosity?
I hate the thought. I hate that I even notice.
Because when I lie awake at night, replaying the meetings, the files, the faces of the men who destroyed my father’s life, his is the one that lingers clearest. Alexei Sharov, calm and deliberate, smirking at the edges as if he knows more than he lets on. I hate that he looks at me like I’m more than just a lawyer at his table.
I’ve gotten good at hiding my reactions. My smile never falters when they joke at the expense of rivals. My eyes don’t widen when I glimpse numbers that prove corruption more massive than I’d imagined. My hands don’t tremble when Alexei’s gray gaze fixes on me, weighing me, measuring.
Inside, everything churns.
Every time I walk into those rooms, I think of my father. I think of his voice telling me justice is worth the fight. I think of his grave, the photo, the pressed rose. And I remind myself: this isn’t about trust. This isn’t about power. This is about revenge.
Still, when Alexei dismisses the others at the end of a meeting, and I’m left with the scrape of chairs and the echo of footsteps fading down the hall, I feel the weight of him watching me gather my notes.
He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to, because his silence says more than words.
I pretend it doesn’t make my pulse skip, even as I hate myself for noticing.
I’m winning his trust. That’s the point. That’s what I need. That’s the only way inside.
So why does it feel like I’m losing something in the process?
