Alexei says nothing. For him, that’s as close to an endorsement as I’m going to get, and I’ll take it.
We work another four hours. The counter-operation for Tver takes shape across two whiteboards. Yaroslavl is still partial, but the structure holds. By the time we break for the afternoon, I’ve stopped being an intelligence source they’re tolerating and started being the only man in the compound who understands how my father thinks when timing matters.
Ruslan catches me in the corridor and falls into step beside me. “I’ve been keeping tabs. Frol’s been making calls. Every contact you ever used. Anyone who ran work for you, owed you a favor, or had your number saved in their phone. He’s working backward through your whole network.”
“How far has he gotten?”
“Far enough that it’s a question of when, not if. There are two men in Kazan who know the full scope of what you handed over. If Frol reaches them before the facility operation closes, your father has the complete picture by morning.” He waits for a guard to pass the far end of the corridor. “I told Boris this morning. He’s moving Kazan up forty-eight hours.”
“That’s tight.”
“It’s workable.”
“Stay close to Boris until Kazan closes,” I tell him. “After that, we figure out the rest.”
He nods, and we go back inside.
The afternoon session runs long. When it finally breaks, I’m the last one at the table, checking account numbers against a cross-reference grid Boris left behind. Part of that is because the work matters. Part of it is because Polina passed the conference room window twice in the last hour, and I wanted to go after her.
She’s in the corridor when I come out.
The first thing I think when I see her face is how she looked in the gym when I fucked her against the wall. I get that under control before I’ve taken three steps, which I consider an improvement.
“How much did you hear?” I ask.
“Enough to understand we’re in for some shit.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
She’s quiet as we walk past the junction where the corridor splits, and neither of us takes the turn toward her room.
“Are you going to have to fight them?” she asks. “Your father. Frol. When this happens…are you going to be in it personally?”
I could manage the edges of this answer. I could point to timeline uncertainty, operational flexibility, or the possibility things resolve before it reaches that point. She’d know what I was doing before I finished the sentence. She’s been readingpeople in crisis for a decade, and she doesn’t ask questions she isn’t braced to hear answered honestly.
“Yes,” I tell her.
She takes that in without asking for a softer version of it. She doesn’t tell me it’ll be fine, because she has no data to support that claim and she knows it. She just lets it be what it is.
Then she reaches over and takes my hand.
She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t say anything to explain it or frame it. We walk the full length of the corridor in silence, and I think about everything she’s still carrying—what the gym didn’t resolve and the two years she keeps returning. She took my hand anyway.
When we reach her door she stops. She looks at me for a long moment, and I watch her decide against whatever she was about to say. She holds on one second longer, then lets go.
And then she goes inside without looking back.
