By three in the morning, I stop pretending this is strategy and call it what it is.
A timeline.
How long before my father’s men connect the surgeon at the fundraiser to the woman I’ve been seeing?
Days, if I’m lucky.
Less if I’m not.
I write down every outcome I can think of, and none of them are clean.
I could move Polina, but that would be useless. My father would still find her, and she’d never forgive me for trying to hide her away without answers.
Keep lying and hope for time? Stupid. Hope isn’t a plan, and my father has never given me time when he can take blood instead.
I could tell Polina everything and run. We’d last a week before someone caught us, and she’d spend every hour hating me for dragging her into a life she didn’t choose.
Killing the men who followed her would be a temporary fix. Bodies raise more questions than reports.
I keep circling the same point until dawn turns the sky gray over the rooftops.
The only way to keep Polina alive is to take her to Dmitri Kozlov.
If I stay loyal to my father, she dies. If I betray him, I lose everything I was raised to protect. I know which loss I can survive.
The thought sits in my chest like a bullet.
Walking into Kozlov territory and confessing to sleeping with the pakhan’s cousin while my family attacks their operations isn’t a negotiation. It’s me stepping into a room full of men who have every reason to put a gun in my mouth and call it justice.
I can live with that.
What I can’t live with is my father putting Polina in a car and sending her body back as a message.
I shove the maps off the table and finally drink the whiskey.
By noon, I haven’t changed my mind.
I text Ruslan to meet me at a bar we use when we need privacy and mediocre vodka.
He arrives five minutes after I do, scans the room, and sits across from me without taking off his coat.
“You look like hell,” he comments.
“You always know how to cheer a man up.”
He signals the server with two fingers. “What’s the plan? I assume that’s why we’re here.”
I hold eye contact as I drag in a breath and reply, “I’m going to Dmitri Kozlov.”
Every muscle in his body tenses. The server drops off two glasses and a bottle. Ruslan waits until she leaves before he speaks.
“Say that again.”
“I’m taking Polina to him. I’ll give him what I know about my father’s operations and ask for protective custody.”
Ruslan lets out a slow breath and pours vodka into both glasses. “You’re insane.”
“I know.”
