Boris finally speaks up. “Did Vadim know you read the file?”
“I imagine so. He tracks who accesses his files, same as you do. Though he never asked me about it.”
“And he trusted you anyway.”
The question under that is obvious. Why would Vadim keep a man close after handing him proof of something that could crack his own house open.
I shrug and reply, “Because I’m his dutiful son.”
Alexei rises again, slower this time, and stalks toward me until there is barely any space left between us. “My wife spent lastnight holding your woman together while she cried over what you did.”
I do my best not to react outwardly. I can’t afford to. But I must slip up, because Alexei’s mouth lifts in a menacing smile.
“That one hurt.”
Tony cuts in before I can answer. “Alexei.”
“No, let him answer.” Alexei turns back to Dmitri. “Or better idea, let me kill him now. We save ourselves the trouble of pretending this ends any other way.”
Boris exhales. “This is bad timing.”
Alexei throws a hand toward me. “You think?”
“We have a Morozov assault coming,” Boris reminds him, “and this bastard knows their routes, their fallback houses, their dirty money, and half the names they’ve been hiding for ten years.”
Alexei turns his glare on him. “You want to keep him?”
“I want to win first. We can deal with him once this is done.”
“That’s convenient for him.”
Tony steps in then. “It’s convenient for all of us.”
Alexei turns on him next. “You gaveherthe file. Not Dmitri. ”
“I knew she would tell him. I just thought she deserved a minute to sit with the information on her own terms.”
Alexei barks out a laugh. “You always sound so calm when you drop a bomb in the middle of the room.”
Tony doesn’t bother defending himself. He looks at Dmitri. “He’s guilty. We all know it. None of that changes the math. The Morozov side will move soon. If we lose his intel now, we go into that fight half blind.”
“I’m not blind,” Alexei argues.
“You are if you think pride replaces information.”
Boris rubs a hand over his mouth. “He’s right.”
Alexei rounds on him. “Are you fucking serious?”
“I’ve buried enough men in my life to know the difference between vengeance and strategy,” Boris says. “One feels better. The other keeps your people alive.”
Silence settles over the room. Not calm. Not even close. Just the ugly pause before someone decides who gets to keep breathing.
Dmitri looks at me with the same focus he would use on a gun laid out on a table. In this moment, I’m a useful object with a clear purpose that just happens to be easy to destroy later.
“Do you have anything else to say for yourself?” he asks.
“No.”
