I do.
“Okay,” I concede. “I’ll wait on your orders.”
He caps the pen and tosses it on the desk. “Then let’s build the assault.”
The next two days vanish into maps, routes, names, and timing.
I sleep in scraps, eat when Ruslan or Tony puts something in front of me, and spend every waking hour inside the bones of my father’s house. I sketch floor plans from memory. I mark cameras, alarm panels, fallback rooms, and the tunnel exit hidden behind the wine cellar wall. Boris walks the team through entry points until half his men can recite them without looking. Tony builds contingencies for every door that doesn’t open and every hallway that turns into a killing lane. Dmitri listens to all of it, cuts what he hates, and forces the rest into shape.
By the second night, even Ruslan has stopped mocking my mood.
He stands over my shoulder while I mark guard rotations on a printout and says, “I haven’t seen you like this since Novorossiysk.”
I don’t look up. “That mission ended badly.”
“So will this one if you keep going without sleep.”
“I sleep.”
“No, you pass out for twenty minutes and toss the entire time.”
I move a marker two inches to the left, ignoring him.
The room we’ve turned into a planning space smells like coffee, printer toner, and the cold food nobody had time to clear. Papers cover the table. Weapons line the sideboard. Somewhere down the hall, Boris is arguing with a driver about fuel and timing.
Ruslan glances at the map. “You’re going to kill him.”
“If I get the chance,” I confirm with an emotionless nod.
“What if Dmitri wants him alive?”
“Then I bring him out breathing, even if I’m not happy about it.”
Ruslan lifts a brow. “You sound very obedient.”
“I’m trying something new.”
“It looks terrible on you.”
That nearly gets a laugh out of me, which feels strange enough that I set the marker down and lean back.
Ruslan watches me for a second. “This about the baby or about her?”
“Both of them, I guess.”
He nods once as if that answer fits the day before he leaves me to the maps. I stay with them until the house quiets and the compound settles into that uneasy half-rest men take before violence. By the time I head to my room, my eyes burn, and every muscle in my back aches.
Sleep doesn’t come.
At midnight, I sit at the desk by the window with a blank sheet of paper in front of me and a pen in my hand. I stare at it for a long time because I know exactly what it means to write this letter.
I start anyway.
Polina,
The first line looks wrong, so I cross it out and begin again. I do that twice more before I force myself to stop acting like a man with options. This isn’t a speech. It’t not a plea. It’s what remains if I don’t walk back through those gates tomorrow night.
I keep it simple. I tell her the truth I should have told sooner. That loving her was the only honest thing I’ve done in years. That I’m sorry in ways language doesn’t cover. That none of this was her fault. I tell her the child deserves every piece of my estate, every account Ruslan can extract, every property Tony can trace, and every safeguard Dmitri will allow. I ask for nothing from her because I have no right to. At the end, after three torn pages and one that I burn in the ashtray for saying too much too badly, I write the only thing that matters.
