“State Security believes in narratives, not truth,” he says, pouring the coffee into two mismatched ceramic cups. “And Ivan Baranov is a man of a thousand contingencies. He had body doubles. He had extraction protocols I helped design. The Kennel trained us to survive the impossible.”
“You think he’s out there.”
“There were no photographs of the body. No name for the unit that performed the execution. The surveillance logs for that sector of the border were 'corrupted' during the engagement.” His jaw sets, a sharp line against the morning light. “These are the hallmarks of a staged disappearance. If Ivan is dead, he is the first Baranov to die without making sure everyone saw the blood.”
“Does it matter?” I ask, taking the cup he offers. The heat of the ceramic stings my palms. “If he’s gone, he’s gone. His organization is a wreck. His father is in your basement. Who is left to hunt us?”
“The possibility must remain a variable in our security assessment,” he says, but he meets my eyes, and I see the glacier in them beginning to melt. “But for today, he is a ghost. And ghosts cannot reach across the Adriatic.”
I take a sip of the coffee. It’s bitter and strong, made with the same lack of mercy he brings to everything else.
“And Viktor?”
“Still in Switzerland. The extradition hearings will take years. His assets have been cannibalized by the smaller families. The Petrenko name is no longer a currency in Moscow.”
I lean back against the counter, looking at my hands. They are steady. They haven't shaken in weeks.
The Petrenko heir is dead. The man who drank a thousand-dollar bottle of wine while people bled in the sub-basements is gone. I should feel a sense of loss, a mourning for the empire that was supposed to be mine. Instead, I feel as if a lead suit has been stripped from my body.
“Jovan Petrovic,” I say, testing the new syllables.
“Stefan Horvat,” he responds.
We take our coffee outside to the terrace. It’s a narrow strip of stone overlooking a drop that ends in the blue-black water of the sea. Two weathered wooden chairs sit there, facing the horizon. We sit in them every morning, a ritual of silence and sun.
“The counting stopped today,” I say, watching a white boat track a line across the water.
He turns his head, his pale eyes curious. “Explain.”
“In the Tower, I counted everything. The footsteps. The drops in the IV. The seconds you were gone. It was the only way to know I was still alive.” I wrap my fingers around the cup. “Even after we ran, I was counting. Kilometers to the border. Heartbeats during the roadblock. Minutes until you woke up from the fever.”
“Survival metrics,” he notes.
“Yes. But this morning, I didn't. I woke up and I was just... here. I wasn't waiting for the next catastrophe.”
He is quiet for a long time. The only sound is the waves and the wind in the scrub brush.
“The Kennel called it operational vigilance,” he says finally. “It was the baseline of my existence for seventeen years. I have also noted its absence. It is... unsettling.”
“It’s peace, Stefan.”
“Perhaps.” He sets his cup on the stone wall. “It is a state for which I have no training.”
I reach out, my hand finding his on the arm of the chair. Our skin is warm from the sun. A month ago, this would have been a trigger for a panic attack or a power play. Now, it is just two people holding on.
“Can I see them?” I ask softly. “All of them?”
He knows what I mean. Not the side-wound—I changed those bandages for weeks. He knows I want to see the history he’s been hiding under the linen.
Without a word, he stands and pulls the shirt over his head.
I’ve seen his body in the dark, and I’ve seen it through a haze of blood and fever. But this is the first time I’ve seen it in the honest, brutal light of the sun.
It is a map of a war that never ended.
The scar on his wrist is a jagged, angry ridge of tissue—the one he cut himself to prove he could still feel. But there is a cluster of cigarette-burn scars on his left shoulder. A long, thin line that looks like a whip-mark across his ribs. A star-shaped pucker on his thigh from an old bullet.
The Kennel didn't just build him; they dismantled him, over and over, and put him back together with whatever was left.
