Page 87 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

“You sent men to take me.”

A pause. Small. Measured. “I sent men to retrieve you before Volkov turned you fully against your own blood.”

Maksim moves beside me, but I lift one hand without looking at him.

Sergei hears the silence and uses it. He always did. “You have been frightened, and I regret that. The men involved overreached.”

“You picked men who overreach for a living.”

“That’s the world we’re in, Solnyshko.”

My teeth lock around the word.

Bastard.

“No,” I say. “That’s the world you kept feeding and calling family.”

Leonid looks up from the far side of the table.

Sergei sighs softly. “You always had your mother’s temper.”

“Do not bring her into this.”

Sergei lets my anger pass without reacting, and his voice stays smooth and bored while he keeps talking.

“I built everything because I understood what weak men do to families without structure.”

I can’t hold back anymore. “Family? What did I ever ask for except a way out of your sick world?”

Sergei sighs and takes his time with it. “You think freedom is a clean apartment, a law degree, and distance from my name. Yes?”

“No,” I say. “Freedom is not being yours.”

Sergei talks over me like he didn’t hear a word. “I let you believe that because you needed ambition, and I encouraged it because one day, you would need to understand what I was giving you.”

Still the operator. My fingers dig into the table edge as that old voice comes through the line, patient, disappointed, and certain I’ll eventually return to his version of sense.

“Giving me,” I say.

“Yes,” Sergei answers. “Protection, continuity, and a place no one could simply take from you. I put your name where it would matter.”

“You buried my name where it could be used.”

“I placed you beyond erasure.”

“You placed me on the Blacklist and then disappeared.”

Sergei says nothing for one beat, and that beat tells me more than his speeches ever did.

I lean closer to the phone. “Say it. Tell them it was for my future too.”

“Elena,” he says, lower now, “you’re young enough to confuse harsh tools with cruelty.”

“No. I can read the filings you buried. I know what a proxy chain does, and I know a dormant company can still move if the right clause is touched.” My voice shakes once, and I steady it. “You sold access to my body and called it continuity.”

Maksim’s hand lands on the back of my chair. He doesn’t touch me. He gives me the line of him behind me, and I hate how much strength I take from it.

Sergei’s voice cools. “You’re emotional. I gave you the ability to survive men like Volkov.”