I cannot. Perhaps I never have.
Eventually, I extricate myself from his arms. He makes a sound of protest, reaching for me, but I press a kiss to his forehead and slip from the bed.
“Where are you going?”
“There is something I need to get.”
The safe is built into the wall of my study, concealed behind a painting. I enter the combination and pull open the heavy door.
Cash. Documents. Emergency passports. The tools of contingency.
And in the back, a heavy file box that I have been keeping for exactly this moment.
I carry it back to the bedroom. Maksim has sat up, the sheets pooling around his waist, his expression curious.
“What is that?”
I set the box on the bed between us.
“Subject 43.” I open the lid, revealing the contents. Folders. Binders. Pages upon pages of documentation—conditioning logs, psychological assessments, training records. The complete history of how a boy named Maksim Orlov was transformed into a weapon.
“The original file,” I say. “Every piece of documentation that was ever created about you.”
His expression shifts. I see recognition, followed by something more complex.
“You kept it.”
“I kept it because it was evidence. Because I thought... I thought that someday, you might want to see it. To understand what was done to you. Or to destroy it yourself.”
Maksim reaches into the box. His fingers brush across the folders, reading the labels without opening them. I watch his face, trying to gauge his reaction.
“I told you I would destroy it,” I say. “The day at the lake house, before my father’s men attacked. I said I would eliminate every trace of what was done to you.”
“I remember.”
I reach into the pocket of the robe I threw on and produce a lighter. I hold it out to him.
“Then let’s finish it.”
For a long moment, Maksim does not move. He stares at the lighter in my hand, at the box of files on the bed.
Then he takes the lighter.
“Together,” he says.
We carry the box to the balcony. The night air is cold, the wind cutting across the elevated space, but neither of us pays attention to the chill. The city spreads beneath us, millions of lights in the darkness, oblivious to the significance of what is about to happen.
I find a metal bin that will serve our purpose, and we begin.
The first page catches quickly, the flames licking up the edges before consuming the center. Conditioning logs. The documentation of how Maksim was trained to suppress his humanity. I watch the words blacken and curl, watch the careful clinical language dissolve into ash.
Maksim feeds the fire methodically. I stand beside him, adding pages when his hands are full, watching the light of the flames dance across his features.
Psychological assessments. Training records. Reports that documented his “progress.”
My own notes are in there too. The file I created four years ago. The systematic cultivation of dependency that I convinced myself was just good management.
I watch those pages burn with a particular intensity.
