I think about the Processing Room. The way my father’s expression shifted when I admitted that I loved Maksim. Not anger. Disgust.
You have confused ownership with dependence.
His solution was never going to bemanage it. His solution was to eliminate it.
Maksim is not coming back. He was never coming back.
Something inside me cracks, but it is not grief. It is cleaner than that. The place where my love for my father used to live empties out, and what fills it is clarity.
My father does not love me. He sees an asset.
An asset to be managed. Optimized. Conditioned.
Just like Maksim.
The irony is so precise it almost hurts. I read Maksim’s file. I documented the methods I used to shape him. And now I can see the outline of those same methods around my own life, executed by a man who has been running systems since before I was born.
I close the records.
I pick up a different phone—not the burner, but a device I acquired months ago for emergencies I hoped would never come.
Lev answers on the third ring.
“Little Prince,” he says. “I wondered when you would call.”
“I need men.”
A pause. “Your father has men.”
“I need men who are not my father’s. Mercenaries. Contractors. People who follow orders without asking why.”
Another pause—longer this time.
“You are talking about something that doesn’t allow retreat,” Lev says.
“I am talking about survival. My father has been lying to me. He used me to eliminate a threat that was never a threat, and he exiled the only person I love. He has no intention of honoring anything. Which means I have no intention of waiting for permission to take what is mine.”
Silence stretches.
“Your grandfather would have done the same,” Lev says finally. “Dmitri never waited for permission.”
“Can you help me?”
“I can make introductions. But Little Prince—once you begin, you must finish. Or he will destroy you.”
“I know.”
“And the one in Volgograd,” Lev says, quieter. “The dog.”
“He is why I am doing this. He called me tonight. Warned me Boris’s network is still active.”
Lev exhales slowly. “Then the heart chose before the head admitted it.”
He gives me names. Protocols. Places.
When the call ends, I stand at the window.
The Pakhan believes he has broken me. He believes that three months of obedience transformed me into the Empty Prince.
