"What?" My voice comes out wrong. Thin.
Ivan's jaw tightens, and I can sense an internal flinch, as if my confusion strikes him like a physical blow.
"My father's condition," he says. "For sparing your life. For allowing you to leave this building alive."
Condition. Price.
My stomach drops.
"You're being reassigned," he continues. "Effective immediately."
Reassigned.
I understand what that means in this context. It's exile masquerading as efficiency. Not a death sentence, but a burial. A way to eliminate a problem without creating a martyr; a method to store a weapon where it can't be misused.
"Where?" I ask, already knowing the answer won't be good.
Ivan's voice falters on the name, as if his throat is full of glass.
"Volgograd."
He swallows hard. "A plane leaves in two hours. You'll be there by morning."
The room tilts.
Volgograd is more than just a city; it is a coordinate etched into my memory. It carries the scent of bleach and cabbage, concrete floors that never warm, numbers instead of names, and the chilling mix of snow and blood. It is Voronin's voice explaining function while boys perish in locked rooms.
Sending me back there is not merely exile; it is erasure.
"You said he would kill me."
"He would have." Ivan's hands rise to my face, cradling my jaw with the same desperate tenderness he showed in the motel, fear evident in his touch. His fingers are cold. "He made it clear. Not later. Not quietly. Here."
I try to envision it.
Sergei nodding once.
Guards entering.
A gunshot echoing off concrete.
My body on the floor.
Ivan's face forced into stillness while his father calls it correction.
I can picture it too easily. I've witnessed men die for far less—over a wrong glance at a woman or skimming a shipment. We dismantled the organization's infrastructure, and I came into contact with the heir.
Ivan bargained.
He traded something for my heartbeat.
And the cost is exile.
"No," I say, my body and chest refusing to accept it. "Ivan, no. We can run. We can disappear—we have the cash, we have?—"
"He will find you." Ivan's thumbs trace my cheekbones, gentle enough to hurt. "And if I'm anywhere near you when he does, he will kill you in front of me. Not as punishment. As proof."
Proof of what? That love is a weakness. That weakness can be removed. That the heir can be corrected like a faulty component.
