"Without evidence," he says, "your father won't move."
"Then we create evidence," I say. "Boris thinks we burned. That gives us space. We move like ghosts."
The phrase lingers.Ghosts.
This isn't a movie. This is two men in a shabby room trying to outsmart a man with decades of experience in murder.
Maksim's mouth quirks.
He watches me check the parking lot through a crack in the curtains. Nothing obvious. No idling car.
Good.
I turn back to him.
He's watching me now with something quieter than tactical focus.
"What happens after?" he asks.
The question is soft. Not strategic. It lands harder than bullets did this morning.
"If we survive," he continues. "If you expose him. What happens to us?"
I sit on the bed beside him. Our shoulders touch.
"I don't know," I admit. "I'm used to building systems. Not... whatever this is."
He exhales slowly. "Neither am I."
I look down at his hands—bandaged, scarred. He reaches out, and his hand finds mine like it belongs there.
"We'll figure it out," I say. "By living through it."
He doesn't answer right away. Then he leans in, his head settling against my shoulder, weight easing into me.
"Together," he says.
I sit still while his breathing slows.
Outside, traffic passes. The motel's heater hums.
Tomorrow we will start rebuilding from ash. We will find new leverage.
But tonight, I let myself be here in a room that smells like bleach, with a man bleeding beside me, and I take the one advantage I can still claim:
Boris thinks he already won. He thinks I'm gone.
And when I walk back into his world, I won't be the nephew he expected.
I will be the problem he failed to finish.
18
MAKSIM
I waketo the sound of running water behind a cheap door.
For a fleeting moment, I don't recognize my surroundings. The mattress beneath me is too soft, sagging in the center. The air is thick with the scent of industrial detergent, struggling to mask years of mildew and stale smoke. A thin strip of gray daylight seeps around the edges of the synthetic curtains, casting the room in a dim, dusty haze.
