“No, I don’t think you do.” He slides one glass toward me. “You’re talking about walking into enemy territory and handing them your throat.”
“You asked me once if she was worth losing everything. I didn’t answer you then, but right now, I’m telling you she is.”
Ruslan drinks, then sets the glass down harder than he needs to. “What if Dmitri kills you on sight?”
“Then he kills me.”
He rubs a hand over his mouth. “And if Kozlov decides he wants leverage, too? You bring him your head and hers in one package.”
I shake mine. “Dmitri isn’t my father.”
Ruslan barks a short laugh. “He’s still a pakhan.”
“I know what he is. I also know what he does when someone threatens his family. If my father’s men make her, she dies or gets used. If Dmitri finds out from me first, he might hate me, but he’ll lock her down and keep her breathing.”
Ruslan eyes me for a long moment, tilting his head. “You’ve thought this through.”
“All night. Planned my funeral while I was at it.”
Ruslan taps one finger on the table. “What do you need from me?”
I knit my eyebrows together and lean forward, certain I misheard him.
I’ve spent years testing loyalty because most people fail when pressure hits. They want power, money, or a safer side to stand on when bullets fly. Even men who swear on blood start doing math when the risk becomes real.
Ruslan just called me insane and moved straight to logistics.
“You’d come with me?” I ask.
He gives me a look like I insulted him. “At this point, I think we’ve passed casual friendship.”
I gawk at him because I don’t know what the fuck else to do.
He lifts his glass. “Don’t make it weird.”
A laugh bubbles out of me before I can stop it. It feels wrong after the night I had, but it helps.
I scrub a hand over my face and get practical, because if I sit with what I'm about to do to my father's name—to thirty years of being the son who never flinched, chose wrong, or anything above the organization—I won't be able to move.
Half an hour later, I leave the bar with my stomach full of bad vodka and certainty.
The city feels different knowing I’m about to betray my father. Every street looks familiar and temporary. I check mirrors as I drive, check the building entry and the alley behind the dumpsters out of habit, because habit keeps men alive.
Inside, I shut the door and stand in my kitchen with my phone in my hand.
I’ve called Polina plenty of times.
To flirt. To bait her. To hear her voice after a bad day. To make sure she got home. To ask for one more hour when I already knew I didn’t deserve it.
This is different.
If I do this right, she hears the urgency and comes with me.
If I do it wrong, she hears another empty answer and hangs up.
She answers on the fourth ring. “What?”
No hello. Fair.
