I nod once. "Drive."
The truck rattles as if it resents being alive. The suspension is shot, feeling every crack in the pavement.
Ivan maneuvers it out of the motel lot and into a stretch of commercial sprawl that looks like any American highway—fast food joints, gas stations, plastic signs screaming bright colors against the gray morning.
Then he veers off the main road. Again. And again.
The neighborhoods change. The glass towers of the Loop vanish behind us, replaced by the city's bones. Asphalt patched and repatched until it's more tar than stone. Brick buildings with boarded windows and iron bars. Alleys that smell of oil and wet metal. Faded murals on concrete walls. Chain-link fences guarding lots filled with rusted machinery that no one bothered to steal because it's too heavy to move.
This isn't the Chicago I know.
The Chicago I know has glass walls, controlled entrances, and private elevators. It smells like money, perfume, and polished wood.
This place doesn't bother pretending.
"You know people here?" I ask, watching a stray dog trot across an empty lot.
Ivan's eyes remain fixed on the road. "I wasn't born in a suit, Maksim."
It's the closest thing to an answer he gives.
But Ivan's hands on the wheel look different here—less about performance and more about memory. He takes turns before the street signs even register, intuitively knowing which lights take too long and which stops are monitored. He drives like someone who mastered this part of the city long before he learned what it meant to be an heir.
We pull into a lot behind a mechanic shop that seems frozen in time.
The corrugated metal siding is rusted at the bottom, and the brick is stained black near the ventilation fans. The windows are clouded with decades of grime. Above the side door hangs a sign in faded Cyrillic: ?????? ????—Volkov Auto. The letters are half-peeled, as if the city has been trying to erase them for years but has failed.
Ivan parks in the shadow of the building and shuts off the engine.
"Wait here," he says.
He steps out, and I watch him cross the lot through the cracked windshield. His posture remains controlled—he can't help it—but it's looser at the joints. He walks like he knows the ground beneath him.
The side door opens before he knocks.
A man steps out. He is shorter than Ivan but stockier, built like a whiskey barrel. His hands are scarred and permanently stained with grease. Gray hair is cropped close to a skull that looks like it has taken a few beatings. His face has been chiseled by time, cigarettes, and an unspoken history of violence.
He sees Ivan and freezes, as if confronted by a ghost.
Then his mouth twists into something that could be affection if it were stripped of its rust.
"Little Prince," the man calls, his Russian thick and guttural. "I heard you were dead."
"Rumors," Ivan replies.
He steps forward and clasps the man's hand.
The grip is old, familiar—not a business shake or a Bratva performance, but something that existed before Ivan learned to measure every interaction for profit.
"I need your help, Lev," Ivan says.
The man's eyes shift to the truck.
To me.
His gaze feels like a physical pat-down. He assesses my posture, my weight distribution, the way my right hand rests too close tomy waist. He notices the limp I'm trying to hide, the bandage under my jeans, and the fact that I'm still standing.
"Bring your shadow," he says. "We talk inside."
