And maybe that was the burden of men like him.
To make brutal decisions and live with the fallout.
Bass gestured to the waiting cars.
“Come.”
Atlas and Raze slid into the second car with some of the others.
I got in beside Bass in the first.
A driver took us through Moscow.
The city hadn’t changed.That was the cruel thing about grief.The world kept moving.
Bass filled the silence, bringing me up to speed.Names.Alliances.Power shifts.Who had fallen.Who had risen.Pieces moving across a board I no longer recognized.But every time the conversation edged toward Viktor—he sidestepped it.
Cleanly.Too cleanly, I noticed.But I let it go.For now.
The estate came into view twenty minutes later.
The gates opened.The cars rolled through.The circular drive brought me face to face with the place I had sworn I’d never see again.
The car stopped.I stepped out and stood there.
I looked at the house.At the windows.The stone.The weight of it.
Nothing had changed.And somehow everything had.
The front door opened.The maid greeted us with lowered eyes and a stiff posture, like ghosts still lived here and she’d learned not to look at them directly.
She led us into the living room for drinks.I followed the men but didn’t stop.
My feet moved before my mind caught up.Down the corridor.Past the portraits.Past the memories in the walls.And onward toward my father’s office.
The door was still the same.It still had the same brass handle.
I stood there for a moment, staring at it.
Four years ago, my life as I knew it had ended behind this door.
And now, somehow—it felt like it was beginning again.
I turned the handle and stepped inside.
42
Rasputin
Istood in the exact spot where my father had killed me.Or where he had tried to.
The office hadn’t changed.
It still had the same dark wood paneling.The same heavy curtains drawn open to reveal the brutal stretch of Russian sky beyond the windows.The shelves were lined with books Viktor Popovich had never read but liked others to believe he had.The same desk where he had signed death warrants, bribed politicians, ruined families, and wielded his power.
The floor had been polished.Many times, I supposed.Someone had scrubbed my blood out of the wood.Someone had knelt right here with a cloth and a bucket and tried to erase the evidence of what had happened.
As if blood ever truly left a place.But it didn’t.Not when there was enough of it.And most certainly not when it belonged to a son.
