“How old were you?” I ask.
“Twenty,” he says. “Twelve men under me. No permission from anyone. First warehouse job on the Volodin line. Fire in the rafters and gunpowder on the floor. If we’d miscounted crates, we’d be ash.”
“And you walked out,” I say.
“I carried the last crate myself,” he says. “The man who owned that corner never walked again. The city learned my name faster than I expected.”
He says it without pride. Just fact.
“You miss it?” I ask.
“The fires?” he asks.
“The part where you carried crates,” I say. “Not orders.”
His gaze turns inward for a second.
“Sometimes,” he says. “The weight was simpler.”
I watch his face. The tired lines. The careful eyes.
“You built this whole thing fast,” I say.
“I built it faster than anyone thought I could,” he says. “Everyone thought it would burn. It didn’t.”
“Now someone wants to pull it down from the inside,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “And he believes he knows my walls.”
I tap the screen.
“He doesn’t know me,” I say. “Not yet.”
Sergei’s mouth curves again.
“Fireworks,” Vladislav says later, when he finds us arguing over a feed in the middle of the night.
He leans into the doorway and watches me push back on Sergei over one of the perimeter routes.
“You can’t keep sending the same patrol through the same gate,” I tell Sergei. “He’s mapping your habits. Break the pattern.”
“And miss a possible contact?” Sergei asks. “No.”
“You’ll give him a clean shot,” I say.
“You’re assuming he’s ready to take it,” Sergei says.
“He’s already taken others,” I say.
Vladislav clears his throat.
“The more you talk, the more I’m sure we should charge him rent for that space in your head,” he tells Sergei.
Sergei gives him a flat look. Vladislav lifts his hands.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” he says, smirking slightly.
When he’s gone, Sergei looks back at me.
