I swallow hard, nod once. My throat feels scraped raw.
The body is dragged out, the blood already beginning to soak into the fibers of the rug. The door closes behind them, leaving only the two of us and the echo of violence hanging thick in the air.
“Do you understand?” he asks.
“Yes.” The word is barely a whisper, but it holds.
He studies me for a long moment before dismissing me with a tilt of his head.
I leave the study on unsteady legs, the taste of whiskey still bitter in my mouth, the sound of the gunshot pounding in my skull.
***
That night, I lie awake in my bed, staring at the ceiling. Every time I close my eyes, I see the flash, hear the crack, smell the iron tang of blood. It loops over and over, refusing to fade.
I’d told myself I was prepared for this. That I could walk into their world and stay untouched, that I could use them without being consumed by them. Tonight proved how wrong I was.
If I succeed, if I dismantle everything Alexei has built, how much of this blood will be on my hands? Every file I copy, every meeting I record, every step deeper into their empire ties me tighter to the violence. Justice and revenge blur until I can’t tell one from the other.
Still, when the clock crawls past three, I sit up, open my laptop, and begin to type. The first file dump goes out through an encrypted channel, my hands trembling as I attach the recordings, the ledgers, the notes. A pulse of information fired into the dark, sent to the only people who know the truth of what I’m doing.
The message is simple:First delivery. More to follow.
I hit send.
The laptop screen glows in the darkness, cold and unforgiving. My reflection stares back at me, eyes hollow, face drawn.
I close the lid and sit in the silence, listening to the echo of the gunshot still trapped in my skull.
There’s no turning back now.
Chapter Six - Alexei
The study still smells like powder and iron when the door closes behind her. Blood slowly spreads across the rug.
Dimitri signals the men to handle cleanup; I barely look at the body. My focus stays on the chair she left, on the glass she set down without finishing. She held her face steady while I pulled the trigger. Her fingers tightened once on the tumbler, then went still. Most people flinch. She held.
I should feel nothing about that. I catalog reactions for a living: tremor, breath rate, eye movement. Tonight her tells were minimal. She absorbed the lesson. This is our world. She will either adapt or break.
“Cars are ready,” Dimitri says quietly.
“Good. Call Pavel. I want her at the gathering tomorrow.”
He studies me for a beat. “That crowd will test her.”
“That is the point.”
He nods and leaves me alone with the echo of the shot. I pour what remains of my drink down the sink, then wash my hands longer than necessary. The mirror throws back a face I recognize from a lifetime ago: jaw tight, eyes concrete.
My father groomed that look into me when I was a boy. Violence first, questions never. I learned a different doctrine with time: control first, violence when needed. Tonight required both.
The night stretches thin before dawn arrives. I do not sleep. Work steadies the hours: routes, shipments, a schedule for a club inspection, an internal audit of cash flow. By morning the rug is gone and a new one lies under the desk. The room smells like lemon oil and cover-ups.
I text her an address with a time. No explanation. She replies with a single word:Received.
Pavel keeps a townhouse off Fifth that looks like old money married to new sins. Marble foyer, crystal lights, velvet everywhere. The kind of place that lures politicians and terrifies accountants. When I arrive, the rooms thrum with the usual mix: Bratva men, their wives or their temporary replacements, two bankers who pretend they’re here for charity. Laughter drips like syrup across the music.
Vivienne arrives on time. Black dress, clean lines, hair pinned high. She moves through the door with that same measured pace from the courthouse: not slow, not hurried, exactly calibrated. The security team steps aside as if she belongs. She catches sight of me on the balcony. Our eyes hold for a second; then she threads through the room.
