I pack quickly.
Weapons. Cash. Documents. The drive with the financial threads I've been pulling on Boris. A burner phone. Clothes that don't scream money. A second phone sealed in a Faraday pouch. Everything I've spent years preparing for a day I told myself would never come.
Maksim comes out in minutes, dressed and armed, hair damp from a quick rinse, bandages intact. He looks more solid than he has in days—sleep did what nothing else could. It put weight back into his eyes.
Not the hunger from the shower.
Not the blankness from after the file.
Something in between. Controlled. Present. Lethal.
We leave through the service route.
Not the main elevator. Not the lobby.
A corridor most people don't know exists, because they don't notice the paths staff use. They see chandeliers and marble and guards with guns, and they forget the service doors hidden behind curtain panels.
I guide us through without speaking. My pulse beats hard in my throat. Every security camera we pass feels like an eye I can't trust anymore. Every sensor feels like a trap waiting to snap shut.
At the garage, the car is waiting—registered to one of my shells, boring as dust, the kind of vehicle you forget before it passes you on the highway.
Maksim sweeps the immediate area before getting in, his eyes scanning corners and checking reflections in the glass. Then he slides into the passenger seat, leaning forward, alert.
I drive.
The city falls away behind us, high-rises shrinking into a jagged line, then a smudge, until there's nothing but the gray ribbon of road and the pale sky overhead.
Traffic thins. Buildings give way to warehouses, then patches of trees, and finally stretches of forest still clinging to autumn's tired, stubborn colors.
The farther we go, the less my shoulders feel like they're scraping against invisible walls.
Not relief. Not safety.
Just space.
Maksim watches everything—mirrors, exits, road shoulders, the occasional car that lingers in our orbit too long. He checks the side mirror every thirty seconds, a metronome of paranoia that matches my own.
After an hour, he speaks, his voice quiet.
"This place," he says. "Your father doesn't know about it."
Not a question.
"No one does."
He doesn't respond immediately. His gaze stays fixed on the road ahead, but the muscle in his jaw tightens.
"Why are you taking me there?" he asks.
Straight to the point. No diplomacy. No softening.
The question pierces me.
I could give him the tactical explanation. It's true and clean:Asset protection. Strategic withdrawal. Isolation protocols.
But this is not a clean situation. He deserves better than a lie, even if the truth is harder to swallow.
"Because if you're somewhere I can't reach, I can't keep you alive," I say. "And right now, that's the only thing I'm not second-guessing."
