"Where is he now?"
"Still in the command center. Acting like nothing happened. Coordinating the post-battle cleanup like he's the loyal soldier he's pretended to be for years."
"Bring him to the east basement. Armed escort. Don't tell him why."
Alexei nods and leaves.
I turn back to the window, my hands clenched at my sides. The rage is building—cold, controlled, deadly. The kind of rage that has fueled me since I was seventeen years old, standing over my parents' bodies and swearing vengeance.
Lenkov. A man I trusted. A man who sat in my command center tonight and watched while Sergei's team took Bianca.
I'm going to find out why. And then I'm going to kill him.
***
The interrogation room is in the basement of the east wing—a different basement from the safe room, older, more primitive. Concrete walls, a drain in the floor, hooks in the ceiling that have seen more use than I care to remember.
This is where we bring people who need to answer questions. The kind of questions that don't get answered any other way.
Lenkov is already there when I arrive, seated in a metal chair, his hands cuffed in front of him. He looks up as I enter,his weathered face showing confusion that might be genuine or might be a very good act.
"Misha." He straightens in the chair. "What's going on? Your men wouldn't tell me anything."
I don't answer. I remove my jacket, hang it on a hook by the door, and roll up my sleeves. Lenkov's eyes follow my movements, and I watch the confusion shift to something else. Wariness. The first flicker of fear.
"The service entrance on the east side of the house," I say, circling him slowly. "You reactivated the access codes three days ago."
"What? No, I—"
"Don't." The word cuts through the air like a blade. "I've seen the logs. Your authorization code. Your fingerprint on the security panel."
Lenkov's face goes pale. "Someone must have—"
I hit him. A sharp, brutal blow to the side of his face that snaps his head back and splits his lip open. Blood wells up immediately, dark against his weathered skin.
"Try again," I say.
He spits blood onto the concrete floor, his eyes wild now. "Misha, please—"
"The encrypted calls. Three months of them. Feeding Sergei information about our defenses, our protocols, our vulnerabilities." I grab his hair, forcing his head back. "You told him exactly how to get to Bianca. You opened the door and let his men walk right in."
"I didn't have a choice!"
The admission hangs in the air between us. Part of me was still hoping—still believing—that there might be another explanation. That the evidence was fabricated, that someone had framed him, that the man I'd trusted for twenty-two years wasn't capable of this betrayal.
But he just confessed.
I release his hair and step back, my knuckles throbbing. "Explain."
Lenkov takes a shaky breath, blood dripping from his split lip onto his shirt. "Sergei approached me six months ago. He knew things—things about my past, things I thought were buried forever. A debt I owed to people who don't forgive debts." He looks up at me, his eyes pleading. "He said if I didn't cooperate, he'd expose me. Destroy me. But if I helped him, he'd make the debt disappear and pay me enough to vanish somewhere warm when it was over."
"So you sold us out. For money. For a clean slate."
"I didn't think anyone would get hurt. He said he just wanted information. Intelligence. He never told me he was planning—"
I hit him again. Harder this time. His head rocks back and he nearly topples from the chair, catching himself at the last moment. When he straightens, his left eye is already swelling shut.
"He took her," I say quietly. "He took her, and you helped him, and you have the audacity to tell me you didn't think anyone would get hurt?"
