“Goodbye,” Sergei says.
He places his hand on Ilya’s throat and presses, not hard, just firmly, cutting blood and air in one sure move. It takes less time than I expect. Ilya’s eyes flare once, then glaze. His chest stops.
The world does not shift. The trees stay still. The lake stays narrow and pale. My heart stays beating.
Nothing else blows.
Kirill watches the body for a long count of seconds. “No second blast,” he says quietly. “No remote signal. No storm on the grid.”
“He lied to the last breath,” Oleg mutters.
“That was his life,” Sergei says. He lets go and stands.
For a moment he sways. I grab his arm again. “Easy,” I say. “Head wound.”
“It will wait,” he answers, but he grips my hand back.
Kirill clears his throat. “We need to strip the place,” he says. “All drives, all wires, anything with a battery. Then we burn it and sink what is left in the lake.”
“Yes,” Sergei says. “Do it. Pull back anything that might help us trace other shells. Then no one lives here again.”
The men move. They climb back into the half-broken house, stepping around the hole in the floor. They haul out anything that looks like tech. They take the laptop, the device shells, the cabling, even the cheap lamp on the table. I stay outside with Sergei.
We stand together and watch as they splash fuel and set the match. Fire catches fast on the dry wood. Orange and black rise into the sky. Heat pushes across my face.
“Feels clean,” I say quietly.
“Cleaner than it was,” he answers.
We leave before the roof falls.
The ride back to the city is quiet.
Kirill and the others sit in the second car with the hardware and the body. They will take that to a separate site. I do not ask where. Sergei will salt that story the way it needs to be salted.
I sit beside him in the front. His head is bandaged now, a white strip over his temple. The cut needed a few quick stitches on the road. His hand still holds mine, thumb moving over my knuckles in slow circles.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he says after a while.
“Ilya’s face won’t leave my head,” I admit. “The way he looked at you. It was not just hate.”
“It was hunger,” Sergei says. “He wanted what I had. The name, the money, the control. When he couldn’t build it, he decided to break mine.”
“You still feel responsible,” I say.
“I picked him once,” he says. “I brought him into this world. I gave him tools. Then I cut him loose without making sure he could not do worse. That is on me.”
“That was years ago,” I say. “He made his choices after that. So did you. So did I. We all carry our own knives.”
He gives a small huff that might be a laugh. “You always pull me back to simple lines,” he says. “That is what I need.”
I look out the window. The city grows closer. Signs appear. Cars thicken around us.
“We still have men who took his money,” I say. “Even if they don’t know he is gone yet. That’s the next work.”
“Yes,” he says. “We cut the rest of the rot. Quiet, patient, one by one. No wide waves. Nadia does not need to live through another war.”
At her name, my chest aches in a different way. “We should go to her first,” I say. “Before anything else. She needs to see my face. She needs to see you whole.”
