I glance at Igor, expecting to find rage or for him to defend his son. Instead, I see only resignation.
He knows what’s coming.
We all do.
Roman’s eyes never leave Sasha, who shrinks with each passing second, folding in on himself like paper burning at the edges. “What did you tell him?”
Sasha shakes his head frantically. “Nothing! I swear, I said nothing, told him nothing?—”
Roman cuts him off. “You met with him. In secret. Without informing anyone. And today, you lied to my face, in front of your father. You lied. To your Pakhan.”
His words are a death knell.
My face hardens. This isn’t about the gift box anymore. This is about survival. About the family. About the code that keeps us all alive and free.
Sasha has betrayed us. And betrayal has only one price.
I’ve witnessed this before. A man, a lowly foot soldier, went snitching to the cops when a rival gang started a bar fight. The quarrel had nothing to do with the family, with Roman, or with any of us.
Still, Roman found him guilty.
And the man died for his sin.
Slowly, Roman rises from behind his desk, his movements deliberate and unhurried, each gesture carrying the weight of absolute authority. He walks to the window with his hands clasped behind his back, silhouetted against the night.
As the silence stretches, taut as a bowstring, my gaze flicks to Igor. His shoulders are bent with the knowledge of things he can’t change.
Part of me wants to offer some semblance of support. But I stay, frozen in place with the others, waiting for Roman’s verdict.
Waiting to hear what we all already know.
Sasha’s eyes well with tears, likely from the realization of what he’s done, what he’s lost, and everything he still has leftto lose. “I thought I could handle it myself. I didn’t want to disappoint?—”
“Enough.” Roman’s voice remains soft, almost kind, and that’s worse than his rage. He doesn’t want to do this. But he will. For the Bratva. “The penalty for betrayal has always been clear.”
The tension in the room shatters everyone in different ways.
My mind goes to a silent, calm retreat. Where the screams and cries and begging don’t reach. Into the cold, where only the wind howls.
Max sits with his head down, muttering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” A litany of useless protest. His fist clenches and unclenches on his knee, his knuckles white with the strain.
Igor turns his face away, unable to look at his son, to witness the moment when family bonds dissolve into nothing. His shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath.
Vanya simply watches, his smooth features arranged in careful neutrality, but his eyes spark. A calculation, maybe, of how close any of us might come to Sasha’s position one day.
Kolya holds his hand over his mouth, staring at the floor and shaking his head slowly. Alexei closes his fingers around his coin, his jaw tight.
The gift box in my hands feels like a grenade with the pin pulled. Irrelevant and all-consuming at once. My mind is already working ahead, mapping what this means for all of us.
“Sasha Pisarev, you are a traitor.” The Pakhan’s irreversible, immutable words settle around us.
One of us will have to kill Sasha. An order we all know we might receive one day.
Kill the one you once loved, the one you once considered family.
Some mistakes cannot be forgiven.
The cold bleeds through my mind and into my body, leaving numbness in its wake. This is worse thankholodno.
